


Clint Barton's (Mostly) Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day AKA the Infinity War starring Clint and Barney Barton

by rohanrider3



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother Feels, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), F/M, Fluff, Gen, Mentions of past child abuse, Team Feels, sort of an au?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-11-09 20:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11112408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohanrider3/pseuds/rohanrider3
Summary: Aftereffects of mind control, an estranged brother, betrayal, an insane Asgardian trying to stop a mad titan with a crazy plan, and a few intergalactic kidnappings complete with multiple team feels.What's not to love?AKA The Infinity War Movie Starring Everyone Who I Think Never Gets Enough Screentime In Canon





	1. Shadows From The Past

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a fic I wrote awhile ago, but just now tentatively decided to release into the wild. I got sick of waiting for Infinity War and desperately wanted more fics exploring the complicated relationship between Clint and Barney Barton. Soooo....yup.
> 
> Same old, same old. Supposed to be a one shot....

The other Avengers left the conference room.

And he and his brother were alone.

Clint realized he had no idea what to do next. As far as he knew there wasn’t a “How to Talk to The Estranged Sibling Who Probably Tried To Kill You The Last Time You Saw Him—For Dummies!” handbook. Or at least there hadn’t been any lying around the SHIELD break rooms he’d frequented over the years.

And he was all out of bad knock-knock jokes.

“Um, Barnes.” Clint said, his usually cheerful voice far too casual, much too deliberately light. “Last time I, uh, saw you. Uh, did, uh, you know. Did…”

“Did I what?!” Barney threw the remark over his shoulder as he continued to clean his gun. Refused to look at him. Just like Dad. His brother’s voice was tense, tight as a wire.

“The, uh, that night. I just, wondered…I mean, did…” Clint swallowed, thought about never finishing the question. About just letting it hang there, forever. If the question was never asked, it could never be answered. And if you didn’t know the answer, it couldn’t hurt you. That was worth it. Right?

Then the thought of their mother’s innumerable aborted sentences and their childhood house’s unbearable silence resurfaced. And he stiffened his spine and finished his thought all in one rush. “…I mean, I just fell. Back then. That time. Right? Off the rope? It was just an accident? Back there with Alan, and the money…”

His voice trailed off at the end, making him sound a lot younger than he liked. But the fact that Barney still wasn’t looking at him hadn’t helped, and Clint had a horrid sick feeling lurching in the pit of his stomach, a mix of crushing certainty that he knew what the answer was going to be, and a terrible tearing hope that he was wrong.

His brother finished cleaning the gun in the shaft of moonlight from the window. Snapped the magazine in. Holstered it. Then he looked back at Clint. His eyes were pinpricks of light and his face was mostly shadowed.

But not enough to hide the utter contempt furrowing his eyes.

“You know, for a guy with twenty-twenty vision, you’re blind as a bat most of the time.”

Oh, look, burning scorn, there, in the voice, too, just like Dad.

Stupid, Barton.

Stupid, Clint.

He’d figured he’d known what happened. The knowledge, horrid and clear, had been there, with him, all the time. He’d just buried it deep and refused to look at it.

But it hurt—it hurt a lot—to hear Barney confirm it all the same.

His own brother had tried to kill him.

 _Kill_ him.

By pushing him two stories to his death. Over a stupid bag of stupid money.

Well, shit.

Clint realized he was wincing, quickly turned it into what he hoped looked like a smirk. He tried—he tried _hard_ —to keep his voice light, sarcastic, cynical. Anything to deflect what he’d just learned.

Confirmed, more like.

Team shouldn’t know this, team shouldn’t know this. Don’t let them know this. Hulk’ll kill Barney, Thor’ll help, Tasha will hide the body, Tony will wipe all records of Barney from existence, Pepper’ll double-check his tracks and figure out a way to erase his social security number and freaking birth record, and Cap will somehow get nonexistent and dead Barney dishonorably discharged from the FBI and crap, then the team won’t have the intel or resources to stop Loki’s upcoming invasion of Earth. His…second…invasion.

And we have to stop it. The FBI can’t do this alone. We—the Avengers—can’t let it happen again. Not like last time. Not like New York. Not like Loki.

Don’t say anything, don’t say anything, don’t say anything, what’s done is done is done is _done_.

“Yeah, well, I, figured.” Clint coughed, once, shrugged one shoulder, searched for something to say that should, um, should deflect, should bounce Barney’s words out, away from him, and into the aching void that yawned between his brother and himself. Where, long ago, there had only been solid and unbreakable trust.  
When that had cracked, it had felt like the world had shattered out from under his feet, and left a yawning, awful blackness where it had been.

Still felt like that.

In a way.

Clint mentally shook himself. He didn’t really know what he said next. The words, when they came, echoed strangely in his ears, as if they came from someone else.

“Your aim still sucked.” he said, and somehow, he managed to still find something obnoxious and unaffected to say. “I missed that pile of tent stakes.”

Barney’s forced laugh was short and harsh. “Did you. Saw you break both legs doing it, though.” When his older brother smiled, he showed most of his teeth. “Heard you were walking again in six months.” The smile dropped off his face. When it came again, his voice was ugly. “Just about the time I got caught and shoved into prison by your buddy Coulson.”

Clint focused his gaze on the wall to Barney’s left. His smile was just as wide and just as hard as his sibling’s. “Huh. Well. I was walkin again in five and a half.” he said smugly. He reached up, slid his sunglasses into place down over his eyes. Stood up, clicked out his bow in a matter of fact way. “Gonna go patrol the perimeter. See you at the meeting tomorrow.”

Barney looked him over and scoffed. Come to think of it, he’d always done a lot of that. “Sunglasses. Really? At night?”

Clint’s toothy smile never wavered.

“Night vision goggles, bro. And they look AWESOME.”


	2. Coffee Intervention

“You’ve never used your night vision goggles before!” Tasha said from her perch on top of the refrigerator. She frowned down at him as he wearily entered the Tower’s kitchen half an hour later and placed his bow and arrows down on a nearby counter with a tired thuwnk.

“I saw you both on the monitors. What was that about?” she demanded. Clint sighed heavily and searched forlornly for a clean mug, bowl, kettle, hell, he’d take a saucepan if there was one lying around so he could get—

“Aw, Tasha, no.” he said blearily. “Not now. Coffee first, talk details later.”

“First thing, it’s the middle of the night.”

“Don’care.”

“Second, you need sleep.”

Clint shrugged one shoulder as he extracted a thick ceramic mug from the drying rack. Hopefully, he flipped some nearby toggles on various coffee urns. Nothing. A dribble of brown gunk gurgled out of the nearest spout into the creamy ceramic. And died. Clint stared mournfully down at his empty mug and sighed feelingly. Tasha sighed too.

“Third,”—she swung a different pot out from her side and, reaching over, plonked it down on the countertop next to her swinging boot, “I made you a pot. BUT,” she amended, dragging it back towards her by the handle, “you need to TELL me WHAT is going on between you and your suddenly materialized brother. The tension is enough to make _Tony_ sit up and take notice, which is saying something, believe you me.”

Clint debated unslinging his bow again, loosing a grappling arrow, snagging the coffeepot, tucking it under his arm, and then running for dear life down the hall and barricading himself in his room, but decided against it. Tasha wasn’t angry so much as curious. And she’d made him coffee.

And maybe if he told her a little about it, and, like, pinky swore her to secrecy, or something, he could get a cup and then this foggy feeling and ache in his chest could fade and he’d be able to keep the rest of it under control the way he had for the past fifteen years.

“‘Kay.” he said, and Tasha’s eyebrows leapt upward in surprise.

A little more slowly than usual, he clambered up to his usual perch next to her on top of one of the refrigerators. Tasha scooted over to make room for him. He held out the semi-clean mug he’d found out to her, yawning so widely it felt like half of his face would fall off.

She just looked at him. This time her eyebrows were raised in inquiry, not in surprise.

“Talk first. Coffee second.” she said severely, and Clint outright groaned.

“Aw, comeon,” he said plaintatively. He wiggled the cup towards her in a pleading fashion. “For Budapest?”

“No.”

“For Prague?”

“No.”

“For Venice?”

“No, and—Clint, you owed me three favors for Venice! I cradled you in my _arms_ and kept you from bleeding out in that canal!”

“I’ll owe you another favor?” he hazarded. He was just stalling, now, and he knew it, and she knew it too, and she knew that he knew that she knew and—oh, screw it.

“Barney and I didn’t part on good terms.” he said gruffly. Tasha became very still, studying him closely with those big green eyes of hers. Then, very carefully, she poured him a full mug of steaming hot coffee and set the pot down at her side again. She waited for him to finish drinking. When he didn’t say any more, she started to speak very slowly, testing the waters. Normally he would have been amused, maybe, worst case, even irritated to see her using her ‘soft interrogation’ techniques on him.

Now he just felt tired.

And he didn’t care.

Not about that, anyway.

He’d chew glass before he admitted as much, but Barney’s sudden reappearance had rattled him badly, shaken him to the core, and the strain of maintaining his stubborn facade of indifference was starting to show. And Loki. God, _Loki was coming back_. That made an already bad situation—

He had to keep it under control. It was just another mission. Another contact. No need to—whooops, Tasha’s talking. Pay attention. Wow, this was _nice_ coffee. She’d hunted down the good stuff. Where had she found…no, agh. Pay attention, stupid.

“…saw Coulson’s files had him working with Swordmaster and the Carnies, off and on, for a few years after you left.”

Clint snorted into his mug. “Huh. Left.”

Tasha twitched a shoulder, looked at him sidelong. “I remember something in your file about a…hospital stay.” she hazarded. Clint tried to glare at her, but felt too tired. He did _not like_ people poking around in his medical file. But she was one of the few he trusted with it, she’d had to access it, once, during Venice, actually, and it wasn’t her fault she had a photographic memory or a brilliant mind that could connect times and dates and injuries and come to her own conclusions.

“Yeah.’ he muttered. “They didn’t like me, ah….leaving.”

Tasha traced the hinge of the freezer door with one finger. “It looked like…I might be wrong, but…they…it was pretty…they really didn’t like you leaving, did they?”

Clint shook his head, once. Somewhere else in the Tower, a door slammed. Alan’s voice suddenly sounded right by Clint’s bad ear. _“—UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT!!”_ Pain burst along his collarbone and he sucked in a breath, instinctively clutched his right hand hard, looking quickly down to remind himself that no, it wasn’t broken, he was fine, he was here, he was in the Helicarrier, with Tash, in the kitchen, he was fine, that was a long time ago, he didn’t have to get away, he was fine.

It was fine. He blinked and shook the old nightmare away.

“Nope.” he said, a little too brightly. Tasha said nothing. She was looking at his coffee cup. Clint glanced at it too, saw his fingers clenching hard, so hard on the suddenly cracked surface that it—crick, crack, crick crack BREAK—

—shattered—

—heeeeeey, just like his hand had when Alan’d crushed it—

Clint swore tiredly as the mug cracked apart in his hand, thin trickling remnants of coffee spurting out between the chinks. He threw the broken thing down into the trashcan with unerring aim, making sure all the pieces bounced down into the bin with perfect precision. Tasha extended one foot, kicked the ice dispenser lever on the opposite refrigerator door, and used the toe of her boot to flip the ice cubes up and over to their side of the kitchen. Clint grabbed them out of the air, took the towel Tasha had gracefully snagged off the rack, and wrapped his hand and the ice together in one big cold mess.

“Any blood?” Tasha asked casually. Clint looked down at his hand to check, then realized he couldn’t see anything because his hand was encased in cotton and ice.

“Uh, no.” he hazarded.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.” he lied.

Tasha didn’t hmph so much as a thoughtful hmm. Clint thought that sounded oddly ominous, but her next question tore his thoughts away from Tasha-murmur-analysis.

“How did you fall?” she asked, directly. Clint blinked at that. She shrugged slightly, her eyes never leaving his face, his ever-present glasses. “Your injuries that night. Most of them. They matched up with a pretty bad fall.” 

Clint shifted, hearing hazy mutterings of doctors and nurses again, echoing down cold hospital corridors from the past.

_….shattered femur….tibia, cracked fibia….rib fractures…splinters of—have to extract…keep him sedated, keep him sedated, don’t know how bad it—_

“I, uh, uh—“ he stopped before he started stuttering again. He’d kicked that grade school habit during his carnival days, and he was not going to start doing it again.

Tasha’s gaze was intense. Not with anger at him, though. Clint suddenly realized, with a strangely queasy feeling of relief, that she wanted to know what had happened. She was worried.


	3. Long Way Down

Tasha was worried. For him.

Clint wished he still had the coffee mug so he had something to look at besides a floral dish towel and a bunch of melting ice. She didn’t have to know this story. But she wanted to. Maybe telling part of it was okay.

“Alan and some of his guys—“ crap, he’d almost said Barney—“realized I was onto them and tryin to leave. I was gonna meet a SHIELD agent that night in town. He was gonna get me out. But I got—“

_caught_ , his brain said,

“stopped,” his mouth said,

“when I was leavin the camp, and, uh, they weren’t super happy—“

_tried to beat me to death,_

“but you know me, I’m pretty tough, so, I got—“

_crawled—_

_“_ away and got up to one of the platforms”

_was tryin to hide,_

“which wasn’t a great idea, turns out, I guess I thought I could run across, get outside and get away, or something…”

_was an incredibly bad idea because when I got up there I was surrounded and had nowhere to go but hey I was concussed as it turns out so maybe I shouldn’t still feel super, super stupid about that major bad move…_

Tasha said nothing. One hand reached out to touch his, then stopped. Clint didn’t see the gesture. He was still too busy looking down at his hand. At his just fine, slightly bleeding, totally not broken hand. That was clutching a dish towel. Not white-knuckling a grip on a rough carnie support rope. For dear life. On a swaying platform that was only partly unstable due to your severe concussion and internal bleeding.

His head hurt again. Voices from the past broke in on his thoughts. No matter how hard he tried to keep them out.

_Where do you think you’re goin, kid?_   
_What, no smart remarks?_   
_Where’d you hide the money?_   
_Come on down. Let’s talk._   
_Barnes, go up and get your brother off that damn rope. Bring him down here so we can finish talking to him._   
_Barney, no, no, nonononono, please lemme go, just, just, ow, listen, okay, let’s get outta here, come on, I didn’t take the money, I told that agent about it, and they’re gonna shut down this whole thing, but I made a deal with them, for you and me, because we didn’t know about the scams and stuff, we can still get out, they’ll help us get…_

And that’s when Clint had known. When Barney had stopped dragging him back towards the platform. When he’d looked back at him. The look in Barney’s eyes had told him everything.

Clint hadn’t stolen the money from Alan Swordmaster.

Because Barney already had.

Because Barney had known.

About the fraud. About the scams.

About everything.

His brother was a liar. And a thief.

Just like their teacher.

And just like their dad.

And Barney had stepped back. And released Clint’s arm. With the tiniest, most microscopic flick of his wrist. It’d been so small, so brief, that for years Clint had been able to mostly convince himself that that last part hadn’t, you know, really, actually happened.

But it had.

And that push had been enough to…

Clint’s stomach clenched, then flipped at the memory of the world abruptly tilting sideways, the hard, unforgiving ground rushing up to meet him, and the sudden, awful dark impact that had hurt _so much worse_ than _any_ beating his dad had ever given.

He swallowed once and clenched his bad hand hard around the ice, instinctively trying to block out the memory, ow Clint, stupid, that doesn’t work. He studiously avoided looking at Tasha. He blinked, shook his head once. Man, he was really glad he didn’t have anything more solid than coffee in his system, cuz if he had, it all would have been coming back up right now.

When he’d hit the ground, Alan and the rest had thought he was dead.

Hell, _Clint_ had thought he was dead.

And then Coulson, heheh, good old Coulson, had showed up, with, like, fifty ambulances and two hundred cops for one stupid kid who hadn’t made the rendezvous, and Barney and Alan had barely managed to get away into the darkness—

Clint coughed once, shook himself. He hid his pause with a masterful yawn, stretched nonchalantly towards the ceiling. “Long story short, Barney came up after me but I fell. Coulson swoops in at the last minute and saves my sorry hide. Most of the Carnies get caught, but Alan and Barney get away to steal another day. Coulson caught him later though, so Barnes served some time. Barney doesn’t like prison, so he’s still sort of sore about it.” He gave another affected yawn, another a huge stretch. Then he looked round for another coffee cup to drink out of. Maybe there was another one in the drying rack over there.

Tasha said nothing for a long minute.

“There was something else.” she said finally. “You don’t fall.”

“Sure I do.” Clint said in a muffled voice. He’d leaned out from their perch, propping himself up with his good hand against a cabinet door, and was peering owlishly down at the heaped Tower of Babel of drying dishware below him. He poked something with the dripping dishcloth mess that was his left hand, casually oblivious of the havoc he was wreaking on Pepper’s clean kitchenware.

“Hey, you think Tony would mind if I take his Man of Steel mug?” His glasses were getting in his way, no surprise there. He’d lied about the night vision goggles thing being at all helpful. And the dumb things were trying to slide off his nose. He grunted, readjusted them up so they rested on top of his head. Kept digging around for the coffee mug. Maybe if he stacked the china on top of the frying pan like a bizarre game of kitchenware Tetris—he said as much out loud, hoping to get her to laugh.

Tasha ignored this blatant attempt at misdirection. “For starters,” she stated, “you don’t fall. Not once since I’ve known you. Not unless you passed out from say, blood loss, or got knocked unconscious when you were up there.”

“Yeah, yeah, that mustafbeenwhathappened.” Clint lied, feeling his face heat up as he plucked Tony’s mug from its place of honor in the center of the rack. He shot up and, grinning like an idiot because he didn’t know what other look he could plaster on his face right now with those memories staring at him dead on, and he _had_ to turn around soon or else she’d figure out something was wrong, held the empty mug out to her like he’d found a million dollars.

“Ta-da! Found one. More coffee?” he asked.

Tasha had already been bringing the pot up, but she’d stopped, suddenly, set it down hard on the countertop. She’d stiffened as she saw his face full on again. He tried looking marginally less like a terrible liar.

Oh. His glasses weren’t on anymore.

Tasha’s eyes turned to chips of green ice as she saw the utterly lost and shattered expression he’d been trying to hide in his.

SHIT, Clint, THAT’S WHY YOU WEAR SUNGLASSES IN FRONT OF SPIES.

“Clint.” she said slowly. “You said Barney came up after you. And then you fell. And you remember that fall, clearly, from the way you tensed up after you said it. So you didn’t pass out or get knocked unconscious. That’s not the reason you fell.”

Clint froze. Slowly, ever so slowly, he put Tony’s mug back in the rack. He swallowed. Once. Hard. He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. What to say, what to say, what to—

She put the pieces together a second later. Her eyes flamed and she spat out a very long and vicious sounding Russian curse. It ended with a very American _“—THAT SON OF A B—“_ and, what with his fuzzy thinking and just with how this whole day had gone, Clint barely managed to figure out his partner’s next move. But he did.  
In the nick of time.


	4. Like It Or Not

“Tasha, no!”

Clint dropped the ice, dropped the dishtowel, jumped off the top of the fridge a split second behind her and barely managed to grab his red-haired partner around the waist as she leapt, tigress-like, for the door that led to the rest of the Tower. And to Barney’s room, where there were at least thirteen different ways she could kill him with the standard SHIELD issued furniture alone.

“Lemme go!!” she snarled, and her voice, though quiet, was no less bloodcurdling for that. “I’m going to—“

“—stay here and not say anything just like you promised!” Clint finished for her, trying frantically, albeit unsuccessfully, to dodge the expert left elbow jab she put into his solar plexus. He hadn’t thought this through. Next time coffee first, details later, angry partner averted. Ouch, right elbow jab to the solar plexus. Glasses spinning off under the fridge. He really hadn’t thought this through.

“I didn’t promise anything!” she snapped, indignant.

“Oh, yeah. Right. Well, you have to promise not to tell anyone now! I shoulda said that before I started talkin!”

“Well, you _didn’t_!”

“You were enticing me with coffee! I forgot!”

She stopped ranting then, her voice dropping low and glacier cold almost instantaneously.

“Clinton Francis Barton, let go of me this _instant_.”

Aw, crap, he really hadn’t thought this through.

He shifted his grip but Tasha was faster, scissor-kicking her way up and around and over and whatever else it was that she did until she’d spun around him, out of his grip, and somehow kicked him backwards into the kitchen island. He bounced off it like an eight ball and turned his stumble into a forward roll of his own, landing on three points just in front of the doorway to the dining room. Tasha stopped her low rush towards it just in time to avoid bashing her head on his nose. She glared at him, then over his shoulder down the hall.

“I said—no, Tash—“ Clint would have gone for something more dramatic and poignant, but he was out of breath from the scuffle and his stomach hurt and so did his tailbone and his heart, kind of, and OUCH next time he was just goin to bed, forget this whole _tell people your feelings_ thing—

“He tried to _kill_ you, Clint.” she hissed, and hooo boy Clint was glad she hadn’t ever been this pissed at him.

Clint grimaced. “Yeah, he did, but, um, but he’s an asset now. He’s our key to takin down Loki. For good this time. I’m not gonna give up that chance just cuz he—“

“PUSHED YOU TO YOUR DEATH!” Tasha snarled. Clint blinked. “Well, um, not really, he didn’t really do that—I mean, I clearly didn’t _die_ —“

“Not for his lack of trying.” she growled, and Clint was so taken aback by the abject fury in her voice that for once he was glad to hear Cap’s annoying yet familiar “What’s going on?”, and see, reflected in the cabinet doors behind Tasha, the reflections of Cap, a bleary eyed Tony, and a concerned looking Hulk and Thor come looming up out of the semi-darkness beyond the door.

Clint shot up to his feet, whipping round to face them all. Tasha rose up as well, still muttering incoherently in raging Russian.

“You guys havea figh?” Tony yawned. Then he got a closer look at Clint’s face and Tasha’s snapping eyes and blinked. “Whoa, now. Wha’ happened?”

“Nuthin.” Clint growled, feeling his face heat up again. Cap just looked at him, one eyebrow raised in inquiry. “Nuthin important.” Clint amended, hoping against hope that their captain would just let him go—

“You have to tell them, Clint.” Tasha said, voice low and urgent. He glanced back at her. Her fists were clenched and they were trembling slightly. “They have to know what kind of person we’re dealing with on this mission.”

Clint blinked.

“We’re trusting him, Clint. With your _life_.” Clint blinked again. “Yeah…” he said slowly, not understanding.

Tasha let out a small sound of frustration and all but stomped her foot. “Argh, fine. If that doesn’t worry you, then how’s this. I want the team to know what he’s done. It would make _me_ feel _safer_.” Clint, and the other four Avengers, stared at her. She glared daggers back. “There, now maybe he’ll do it.” she said sotto voce to Cap, who suddenly looked both sad and serious simultaneously.

“What’s who done?” Tony piped in.

Clint felt his shoulders stiffen with an unreasoning, yet still almost uncontrollable rage at the situation, and the old pain, and most of all at how utterly helpless he felt whenever that memory resurfaced. He still felt helpless. He always felt helpless.

_An infant throwing sticks at shadows_ , the voice from his nightmares chuckled in his ear. Dammit, Clint, you’re _useless_.

Clint swallowed hard at the thought and the sudden, voiceless, angry panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d been having nightmares ever since New York. For two straight years. Not that he’d told anyone. Huh, some Avenger. Having nightmares like a child. And the voice, this strange, low, mocking voice in them just kept getting louder. Had started bleeding into his waking hours. It wouldn’t go away. But he couldn’t tell anyone about it. They’d think he was crazy.

Well, that was to say, craz-ier.

And besides, the few times he’d tried his voice sort of shriveled up and he lost track of what he was trying to say. Whatever. Because really, they were just bad dreams.

They didn’t keep him from doing his job.

But now Barney was here, and they were going to be partners, have to be, again, and he couldn’t screw this up or else Loki would hurt more people again and it would be his fault again—oh, uh, he wasn’t saying anything, the team was all looking at him, argh, you loser, Clint, don’t just stand there like a mute idiot, DO something already.

His fingers itched in frustration, they wanted to grab something, Tony’s Man of Steel mug, maybe, and hurl it through the nearby window, exercise control over _something_ , watch _it_ shatter and explode dramatically into a thousand tiny shards, watch _something_ _else break_ and be _useless_ for a change.

No.

He wouldn’t smash anything needlessly. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t his brother, he wasn’t his mentor, he wasn’t his dad. Focus, Clint. Focus.

_They’ll think you’re stupid when you tell them._ The small voice whispered smugly in his ear. _If they don’t know already._

He took a deep breath, then another. He tried thinking of ways to tell them. Quickly. Briefly. Don’t make this a drama show. Over and done with, over and done with, move on. Taking too long already. They’re looking at you. Waiting.

“Barney, uh, Barney—before he joined the FBI, obviously, he—we—we, uh. We were part of this, gang, I guess, you’d call us. The, um, we were the, uh, Carnies. Ran off and joined when we were kids.” He chanced a quick look over at Tony, see if he was laughing at the gang’s stupid name, but Tony wasn’t laughing. He just looked sleep deprived….and maybe more-than-usually-worried. And Thor was exchanging puzzled looks with Hulk.

Clint didn’t look over at Cap. He didn’t want to see the look on Captain America’s face when he found out that one of his team had been in a gang. Even a gang with a stupid name.

“We, um, the Carnies traveled. It was sort of a, circus thing. Ended up being a front for a bunch of criminals. Go figure. After a while I ended up findin out. Ended up calling SHIELD. Got out. But Barney stayed with em.” Clint shrugged. “But he musta turned his life around too. Which is why he’s wearing an FBI badge now, instead of an ankle bracelet. So yep, that’s what happened.”

Tasha’s teeth ground together. “Clint.” she said warningly. “Tell them the important part.”

Clint ground his own teeth together. Next time he was definitely going to just email any and all crappy info to his team. And then go on a two-month mission to the Outback until it all blew over.

No. He couldn’t do that.

He could, uh, text it. That would be fine.

Did he have enough characters for that kind of text? _Estranged brother once tried to kill me, fyi. TTYL! Awkward smile emoticon._ Yeah, that could probably—his thoughts spread out suddenly, wandered off along lightning fast paths, thinking about different options and problems.

Because, did Thor get texting in Asgard? Could Hulk hold a phone? Did Cap know what a smartphone even—

—the voice from his nightmares suddenly screamed out in his mind again, shattering his trains of thought—

_—STUPID, BROKEN, WORTHLESS, —_

“—INT!” Tasha was practically screaming his name now. She’d grabbed his arm, was staring at him. Her eyes were big and she looked scared. Scared? Really? Scared of what? Of him? Come on.

“—blanked out!” she said breathlessly, pupils huge. “Your eyes went all …” she sliced a hand abruptly through the air. “Empty.”

“Yeah, man.” Tony put his oar in from his other side, his usually cheerful face drawn and lined. “You sorta, uh, left, for a second there.” Hulk looked scared. Thor was pale. And Cap looked worried.

_Stupid._ the voice muttered. _Stupid._

Tasha got right into his face, then, her own face ashy pale, eyes glittering in the anger which only barely concealed her utter panic.

“Don’t _do_ that.” she said, eyes boring into his, voice sounding almost more scared then that one time in Venice. “Don’t _disappear_ like that.” Clint looked down at her, felt his fists clench suddenly at his sides again.

He started to snarl at her, then fought down the urge at the last minute. Looked away. It wasn’t her fault he was busted. It wasn’t her fault he was crazy.

“Fine.” he said thickly, once he’d gotten his voice under control. He kept his words short, his tone flat. Get it over with. Get it over with. Then get away.

“Barney pushed me off the high wire, okay. When I tried to leave the gang. I was tryin to get away, and I went up the wire, like a moron, and he found me, and he pushed me off to keep me from talkin.” At Tasha’s glare, he added in a rush, “AndIalmostdied, there, happy?”

Tasha looked anything but happy. So did the rest of the team.

His hands hurt.

When he looked down, he saw that his fists were clenched so tightly that the blood had started to trickle down from his palms. Even the one that hadn’t been sliced from the broken ceramic mug. Ow.

He grumbled at himself, tried putting his hands in his pockets, caught Tasha’s sharp look. Ended up rolling his eyes and reaching out past her, grabbing his gear off the nearby counter.

“I gotta go train for tomorrow.” he said evenly. He hoped it was evenly. He’d tried to make it sound evenly. He hoped his voice hadn’t cracked. Wasn’t sure. “So, yep. See ya all lat—“

His pathetic excuse— _pathetic_ , _just like you_ , ahaha, shut _up_ brain—was lost in the ensuing babble of shocked questions and enraged outcry. Clint gritted his teeth.

This was **exactly** what he _hadn’t_ wanted.

Tony made a squawking sound, Thor swore something in old Asgardian, and Hulk said “He did that on _purpose_?” in an abjectly horrified voice that sounded like someone had just told him Santa Claus was secretly an axe murderer. Cap said nothing. Still just looking at him.

“Yes, on _purpose_.” Clint snapped back at them, embarrassed and ashamed at how angry and defensive his voice sounded. “He wanted the money, I guess. He never said. But now he’s changed. Just like I have. So everyone just shut up and work with him so we can take down Loki. Okay?!” He felt his face heat up. And Tasha wasn’t movin out of his way. He glared down at her, frowning. She looked back up at him, eyes sad but jaw set. And still didn’t move.

“Clint, don’t leave like this,” she said, and her voice was sad, oh, great, now she was sad, that was awesome, his own partner thought he was weak and pathetic and useless and—

_—she already knows that—_

_—SHUT UP BRAIN—_

—and Tony’s asking like a million questions and Hulk is turning greener and now Mjolnr is starting to crackle with little bits of static electricity—and Cap is trying to say something about safety protocol and dangers to the mission and how they can always push it back if they need to—no, no, no, no, NO—

_**“IT’S! NOT! IMPORTANT!!”** _ Clint suddenly screamed, and the rest of the team’s voices abruptly cut off, as if he’d punched a mute button on some kind of universal remote. Tony’s mouth was still-half open in mid-question, eyes wide, Thor looked taken aback and Hulk looked confused, Cap was still just looking at him and Tasha was—was—

He wasn’t looking at Tasha, he was looking anywhere else, right now—

—he hadn’t meant to scream, not really, but now he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop—

“HE IS OUR _**ONLY**_ CHANCE OF TAKING DOWN _**LOKI**_!!” Clint hollered, turning half way round and stabbing down the hall with his bow, in the vague direction of Barney’s room. He felt something snap inside his throat, turning his voice harsher, crazier. But he couldn’t stop. “YOU _**HEARD**_ HIM AT THAT MEETING!! YOU _**SAW**_ THE EVIDENCE!! I _**HAVE**_ TO GO WITH HIM TO THE DROP, HE WON’T _**TAKE**_ ANYONE ELSE, AND _**DO YOU REALLY WANT NEW YORK TO HAPPEN ALL OVER AGAIN?**_! BECAUSE I **_DON’T!_ ** I HAVE TOO MUCH BLOOD ON MY HANDS AS IT **_IS!_** ”

Now Tasha was yelling at him too, standing up on tiptoe and trying to get in his face—don’t do that, Tasha, don’t don’t don’t do that—he was seeing red now, red around the edges of his vision, and there was a dull roaring in his ears as if the voice from his dreams was laughing, or roaring, or yelling, or all of them at once—

“NEW YORK WASN’T YOUR FAULT, CLINT! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT—“

“SHUT! UP!” Clint roared. His left hand curled tight around his bow, so hard the leather bindings hurt as they dug into his bleeding palm. The pain tugged at the back of his mind, an anchor in an otherwise spinning world. In front of his eyes, Tasha’s eyes were all he could see. They were wide open, angry. And scared.

And knowing that hurt.

All too familiar thoughts raced through his mind, speeding faster than light.

She’d never been scared of him until New York. Not once.

But then he’d tried to kill her on the Helicarrier.

And he’d seen, even through the mind control, that Tasha, the toughest woman he knew, who knew seventeen full ballets by heart and who could make a rocket launcher out of industrial piping, duct tape, and a few grenades, a little girl who had been brainwashed into a killing machine when she was five and come back from that, who had then made it her mission in life to always go up against anyone who hurt other people or who went after the weak…a mission they both shared…she’d been _terrified_.

Of _him_.

Nice job, Clint. Way to freaking go.

Sure, they’d worked together since then. A lot. And he’d saved her. Sometimes. And she’d saved him. A lot. They’d been able to make the partnership, even the Avengers, work. He’d even made her laugh a couple times.

But deep down, he knew, and the voice from his nightmares agreed, that she still was scared of him. Didn’t trust him.

Could never trust him again. Not really.

And that could never change.

Because, when it really mattered, when the world had literally been on the line, he’d been the first one to give in to the bad guys. He’d been helping Loki almost as soon as the freaky green god had waltzed in through the portal. Killing who he wanted, helping him get away, attacking whatever target he’d been pointed at. And Tasha had almost died as a result. _Everyone_ had almost died.

The next thought almost broke Clint apart. Had chipped away at the back of his mind for years now, and now, finally, tonight, right now, had at last broken through, in all its ugly, leering glory.

He’d failed everyone.

Because underneath all the bluster, and the bragging, and the shiny arrows, he was nothing but a weak, spineless little shit.

His dad. Alan. Barney. They’d all been right.

**_Weak. Worthless. Stupid. Weak._ **

He thought he’d wrestled everything back into a semblance of control. It’d taken him a long time, and it hadn’t been easy, and yeah, SHIELD didn’t want him anymore, sure, Coulson had faked his own death… and not told him he was alive for over a year…blah blah blah blah reasons…and now his old mentor was off doing other things with people he trusted…more. That was…it…well. It made sense. Clint understood that. But Clint had somehow managed to be of some use to the Avengers. So that was good.

But now Barney’s sudden appearance at the Tower tonight, his sudden blasting news of Loki’s imminent return planning another, stronger invasion, his insistence on working with Clint, only with Clint, otherwise no intel, otherwise no deal, otherwise no help, everything had coalesced and crashed down, flooding Clint’s mind with two horrible, distinct realizations.

One. He _had_ to do this.

Two. He _couldn’t_. He had no idea how he could. But he _had_ to. Because otherwise, it would all go to hell and it would be his fault.

_Again._

Everything else in his mind seemed to drown in that knowledge. And Tasha’s words were distant and small compared to the chaos screaming in his mind. He’d taken a few steps back, rubbed the bridge of his nose, told her to shut up again. A couple times, actually. Not that she listened.

“CLINT, YOU’RE DISAPPEARING AGAIN—NO, I’M NOT SHUTTING UP UNTIL YOU BELIEVE ME!” Tasha screamed, and her voice was frantic, now, she’d grabbed his arms, don’t do that Tasha, she meant what she said, she wouldn’t stop telling him, wouldn’t stop believing in him, and she was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and she didn’t know it, and it would _hurt_ her one day—he didn’t know how, but it would, and the thought of her getting hurt _terrified_ him—made him _angry_ —

—Cap, trying to get in between them, forcing them apart, ordering them both to stand down—

—Tasha’s grip on his arms wasn’t lessening, she wasn’t letting go of him—if anything it was getting tighter—she was _trapping_ him, stopping him from _leaving_ —

The maelstrom of pain and anger tearing Clint apart inside suddenly coalesced into a single crystal of blinding rage. A dim part of his mind found it frightening how utterly focused he was, how absolutely, utterly furious he’d become. The last time he’d been this angry was at his dad.

With an eerie calm, he stepped back from Tasha. He brought his arms up and out, breaking her hold. He held her gaze with a look, then looked at the rest of the now completely silent team.

“Don’t. Just…don’t.” he said dully, and half-turned to continue on down the hallway, towards the training room.

Tasha followed him past Cap’s grasping arm, reached out for him again.

“No, Clint, wait, please—“

Clint struck out, lightning quick, focusing every ounce of strength into the blow. The impact thudded dully around the room.

Tony choked in disbelief.

Clint hadn’t even turned around.

Clint would _**never**_ strike Tasha in anger, not **_once_** , not if his life depended on it, the only times he’d ever fought with her for real were the first time they’d met and then that clustercrap on the Helicarrier back when he’d been under Loki’s mind control, but he was angry, now, he’d only been this angry a couple of times in his life, and even with his hard-won accuracy he couldn’t guarantee he’d miss her if he even turned in her direction, but he was so angry right now, and he had to let it out somehow.

He’d _**never**_ hurt a teammate.

But that code of conduct didn’t extend to the _Tower_.

So he just reached out and punched the empty hallway wall by his head as hard as he could, pouring all the rage and the pain and the long years of fury at being utterly _useless_ into the blow. He felt the skin on his knuckles split along with the tiles, saw and heard the cracking lines radiate out from the point of impact.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Tony’s eyes were bugging out, he was so aghast. Hulk looked surprised. Scared, even, a little. Which was ironic. Thor looked lost. Cap—he couldn’t read Cap’s expression. Disappointed, probably. He usually was. Well, that wasn’t fair to Cap. Usually he was real encouraging. Cuz he was a really good leader. But he was definitely disappointed in Clint now. He had to be.

And Tasha’s eyes were wide too. With shock. And tearing up. With something else, maybe. He didn’t want to think about what exactly that thing was. Worry for him, it looked like. She shouldn't. Worry. About him. Wasn't worth it.

Clint’s fist throbbed.

“Don’t.” he said again, and his voice and eyes were flat. Tasha’s extended hand dropped down to her side. Clint turned around and continued on down the hallway, curling and uncurling his bloody fingers automatically.

No worries.

He’d wrap them up tonight after training.

He’d be fine for the mission tomorrow.

Go with Barney. Get the info about Loki’s next portal. Go early. Avoid seeing the team again until it’s all over.

Get the intel to the Avengers.

Take down Loki. Stop the Second Invasion before it even happens.

Simple.

Even someone stupid like him could figure that out.


	5. Should Have Seen This Coming

Well. Who could have predicted that Barney would betray them to Loki.

Well, specifically, him, to Loki.

Because apparently the early morning intel-gathering mission was, in fact, a “deliver-Clint-over-to-the-maniacal-guy-who-brainwashed-him-once-before-and-now-has-the-Sceptre-again” meeting.

From what he was sayin to Loki, it sounded like Barney was HYDRA all along. And had dragged Clint all the way out to the middle of a freaking desert in the American Southwest just to hand him over to the invading alien jerkwad prince.

Oh. And his comms weren’t working. And the tracking devices weren’t either. Along with his backup tracking devices. And his backup backup tracking devices and various emergency beacons and comms that he and Tasha carried as ways of alerting the other whenever one of them had walked into a trap. Which happened depressingly often, come to think of it.

One stupid taser to the back and everything gets fried. Well, maybe a few tasers to the back. Clint couldn’t remember that part very well. Thanks Barnes.

And now he was curled up in the dirt and sand and whatever, tightly hogtied with Barney’s stupid ever present FBI zipties, I hate you so much right now, big bro, and helpless and hating this…just…this whole thing. GODDAMMIT.

_Tasha could have predicted this_ , Clint’s little inner voice offered. _Tasha did predict this. But you didn’t listen. Because you’re stupid. And weak._

Thanks, inner voice. Thanks a lot.

“Barnes, think about what you’re doin.” Clint croaked. His voice hurt. Getting tased in the neck and then letting Barney know exactly what he thought of him had not done his messed up voice—getting tased hurt, ow—any favors. Not that Barney seemed to mind. He’d just shrugged. And turned away. Like he couldn’t hear him. Or what Clint had to say didn’t matter. Well, hell. Maybe it didn’t.

Had his last radio message made it out to Tash and the others? Please, please, please let that be the case…what had he told them…maybe he’d started describing the weird heat haze that had come up before Barnes had—before Loki had—

“No, they don’t know I’m here.” Loki said offhandedly. Smug little green snake hadn’t even bothered to turn around from his muttered conversation with Barney. Clint gritted his teeth. He HATED it when Loki did that. Read his freakin mind.

_Not that you have much of one._

GODDAMMIT BRAIN—

Loki winced, put a hand to his head. When it came next, his voice was tense, almost pained. “Be silent, archer.” he said brusquely. Clint scoffed, feeling his breath huff out in uneven pants.

“Wha? What’d I say?” he said, fighting against the control he knew was coming for as long as he could, trying hard to keep his sense of normalcy—well, what passed for normalcy when you were an Avenger—present. He couldn’t help himself. He’d done it ever since he was little. See a threat, like, say, an abusive drunken dad, be a smartass. Grab some control, even if it was only a way to claw your way through your fear. Grow up. Become an Avenger. Play in the big leagues. See a world ending threat, turn your snark up to eleven. Make fun of it. See something too big for normal humans to handle, don’t run away, don’t lose your mind, instead laugh, tease, snark. Point out its flaws. Find something to laugh at. Look hard, find its _weak_ points, find its weak points—there were always—weak points—

Even, even Asgardian gods who—who mind controlled—s—stupid weak minded people, they, they always had—weak poin—

“—I—didn’ say—anythin—“

“—said _quiet_ , archer.”

Fiery pain, stabbing through his chest, burning behind his eyes, searing through his head, snapping his mouth shut. Just like last time.

Shit. Clint thought faintly.

And that was all.

Loki’s mind control whammy, or hypnosis, or whatever, reached out and pulled him in, sucked him under, stopped his voice.

Just like that.

It iced over his thoughts, paralyzed his reason. Just left him there, alone, in his mind, stuck. Trapped. Alone in dark, echoing corridors, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to move a goddamned muscle in the outside world without express permission. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. Couldn’t think. Not like. Normal. Just like last time. Just—

—just be—normal—be a—smartass—even if you—can’t—talk—

This was. Wierd. Kind of. Funny. His dad. Alan Swordmaster. Hell. Barney would have. Killed. For that kind of. Control. That ability. Make each person behave. Exactly. As they desired. Lockstep, lockstep. One, two. Yessir, Nosir.

Clint had never. Liked. That sort of. Obedience. Had always. Prided himself. Bein too stubborn or just. Plain ornery. For those. Intimidation tactics. Ta work. On him.

Except when. They did.

_Mouth off to me again boy, and I’ll hit your ma again—that’ll teach you—_

_—Archery? I taught you everything you know, you ungrateful little brat, and you repay me by ratting me out to the nearest cop—_

_—you and me against the world, that’s what you said, Clint, you and me, and now what are ya, a stupid little rat who can’t even run away fast enough—_

Clint forced himself to rip his thoughts away from the past, ran away from one disjointed, angry voice at a time, away from his dad, away from Alan, away from Barney. His thoughts were flowing too fast now, roiling and tumbling over themselves in a panicked frenzy, words, images, blurs, can’t pick anything out of them at all now.

No shortage of thinking, just a shortage of actual thought.

That was the thing about mind control. Sometimes only two or three words made sense at a time. Like a bad engine shuddering through gear changes. Other times lots of words rolled all in at once, like the engine had started racing out of control.

Gah, mind control **_sucked_**.

It twisted your mind, ripped open your thoughts, sewed em back together wrong. Ow, ow, ow. Hurts. Hurts. Hurts to…think. Have to think. Have to.

His mind drifted back to the first time this had happened. He’d tried. So hard. Ta figure out. What went. Wrong.

Mind control only worked on. Weak-minded people, they said. Well, maybe. Maybe he was. Who was he kiddin. He was. Stupid. Stupid. He was. Stupid.

Ngh.

Mind.

Frozen.

Can’t think.

Waiting for orders.

Waiting for permission to think.

The worst part. Was how it all just…felt so.…normal. Now. Like it’d never stopped. No matter how hard he’d fought it, how much he hated it. How much he’d fought against it, how hard, how awful hard he tried—it—it—just clicked right back into place. Like he’d never gotten free, as if Tasha hadn’t rattled his skull—twice—and shaken the little Asgardian bastard loose from his head.

But it didn’t keep the little rat from getting in again, nothing stopped him, augh, mental strength and defenses his foot.

_**Weak**_. The voice from his nightmares, the ones where Loki’s first invasion had worked, where the Helicarrier had crashed into the sea and New York had burned and Tasha and Tony and Hulk and Cap and Thor and everyone else had died, the voice screamed at him, again and again and again, **_Weak, weak, weak_**.

After the first “Loki incident”, the shrinks in SHIELD hadn’t wanted to keep mind control from happening again— _don’t worry, Hawkeye,_ they’d said, _it won’t ever happen again_ , they’d said, _we’ll get back to you about preventative measures_ , they’d said—they hadn’t wanted to stop it from happening again, so much as they’d wanted to know how it had felt.

Huh. How it had _felt_.

_Golly gee, I don’t know, Doc, it was really, like, weird, it felt like I was watching someone **else** shoot Director Fury, and Rick and Dan and—and the rest of the security team, and then matter-of-factly talk about and then scan a still living eyeball from some unlucky doctor as a security code. And then saw that same horrible mechanical person basically destroy the Helicarrier, you know, the base where all my friends lived—had, lived—cuz he knew just where to shoot it, send it fallin from the sky? And then tried to choke and shiv and beat up and otherwise murder their partner? The real pretty, awesomely incredible one who you were thinkin about askin to maybe marry ya? Once she trusted you? And all the while you know exactly what you’re doin and you’re hating yourself for it?_  
**_YOU’RE ASKIN HOW THAT FELT?!_ **

That’s what he’d felt like saying. What he’d actually said was more along the lines of,

_Cough, cough, Uh, no, sorry, can’t help you. Hard to describe, Doc._

One doctor had carefully suggested that maybe Clint had secretly harbored anger against SHIELD in some capacity, and Loki’s brainwashing attack had just removed any or all inhibitions about expressing that anger. Another doctor, a buddy of hers, had pointed out that the physicist had been able to fight back, if only passively, by putting in that back door to the Tesseract’s portal device. Why hadn’t Clint done more of that? they’d asked. Not in so many words, but they had asked. It’d taken him awhile to see what they were doing. But when he had…

Clint had just stared at them. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t said a word for a full minute. Then he’d just stood up and left. That had been his last so-called “therapy” session.

Ever.

Tasha had been waiting outside for him. Some urgent mission they needed to do.

And, judging from the frozen expression on her face, she’d heard their questions. Or pieced it together.

He never saw those two doctors after that.

Turned out they’d been permanently reassigned. To Antartica. To study penguins.

Fury’s signature was on the papers.

He’d checked.

Not that he’d really cared about the rules that time.

But, heheh. _Penguins_.

Tasha was. Great. Real pretty, too.

But also…distracting?…

Clint tore his thoughts out of the past, forced himself to at least try to look around.

Gah, look around, look around. Think about the present. Loki was still talking to Barney. Something about doppelgängers and fooling the Avengers when they came here for the rendevous. Clint should listen. He didn’t want to. Hearing them talk just reminded him how stupid he’d been. But he should listen. Maybe he can get info, get something for his team, get something to help them take down the little green bastar—

“OHMYGODS, ARCHER, I SAID, QUIET!!” Loki snapped again, and suddenly it felt as if an icy dagger had been stabbed deep into Clint’s brain, sliding into his skull through his left eye. Clint’s whole body stiffened, arched. He realized he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

Well, _ow_.

“—thought you said you wanted him quiet?—“ That was Barnes, always so funny—

Ow, this wasn’t fair, not fair not fair not fair, Clint hadn’t said anything. He couldn’t. Like, physically, couldn’t. The mind control wouldn’t let him—

—wait—

—the mind control wouldn’t let him _physically_ say anything—so what had Loki been talkin abo—how could Clint be any more quiet than he already wa—

**_“STOP! THINKING!”_** Loki screamed, and what the _whaaat_ Loki can hear everything I’m thinki—

Oh, hey, there was the second dagger of pain, right on time, right eyeball, Loki’d done this too, last time, ow, ow, ow, can’t think can’t think can’t think can’t think ow ow ow ow ow can’t think ow ow ow ow ow—

“—yeah, I can see why he’s _perfect_ for this mission. There’s no _way_ your plan fails and this all goes wrong.” Barney’s sarcastic voice drifted in through the agony. There was an angry whud. Probably Loki thwoking the heavy end of the scepter into Barney’s stomach, hahah, serves him right.

“Don’t be a impudent fool. You know nothing.” the Asgardian snapped.

“Thas’ true.” Clint instinctively slurred from his position on the ground. Granted, each word he spoke felt like a nail-toed kick to the stomach, and at best they only escaped his lips as a low, disjointed mutter, but Loki’s control had slackened somewhat, probably because he was focused on not blasting Barney to bits with that staff of his. The two of them were glaring at each other as if they’d like nothing better than to rip the other to pieces. Hey, maybe if he galled them enough, they’d start blasting at each other, Loki’s control would loosen, and he could get out of these zipties.

  
The thought of slipping free of the mind control made him almost sick with frantic hope.

So he tried needling them again. Just to see if he could.

“Bof of you. Todal morons.”

Turned out that antagonizing his evil older brother and a certifiably crazy Asgardian god didn't do Clint any favors. Clint's last frantic thought before Barney's final dose of sedative knocked him unconscious was that he freaking HATED family reunions. 


	6. The Party You Are Calling

Barney glared up at the spaceship shimmering into place just above them. He didn't like flying. Never had. But apparently the plan involved using his stupid little brother as bait as well as invisible spaceships magically appearing out of thin air. Fine, whatever. Just get this stupid job over with.

Barney carries Clint over his shoulder fireman style— because Loki is a freaking little princess who can’t be bothered with this sort of thing—and drops his unconscious brother into a more or less functional bed all on his own. Well, that might not be entirely fair to his partner. Technically, the would-be heir to the Asgardian throne had offered to shock Clint back into consciousness so he could drag his own sorry hide into the ship. But Barney had gruffly declined. As he’d given the last dose of sedative, one hand on Clint’s chest, keeping him steady, he’d felt how Clint’s heart had stuttered, how his lungs had fought for air. They didn’t seem up for a lot at the moment. 

He'd told Loki that was the reason he didn't want Clint awake again. But secretly, he didn't exactly want to look at Clint for much longer than he had to. Or he didn't want _Clint_ looking at him. Not that he cared what his brother thought. Not really. Clint just looked--well.

When Barney'd sucker punched him in the desert, and then when Loki'd shown up. Clint'd looked...rgh, whatever. It wasn't like he and Clint had even talked once over the last fifteen years. 

Stupid kid.

Clint shouldn't have been surprised when Barney'd betrayed him. He should have figured it would happen.

But Clint _had_ looked surprised. _Sick_ , even. But that was cuz Clint was _stupid_. 

Stupid Clint. 

"--don't want his heart stopping on us all of a sudden." Barney'd groused. He'd shifted Clint's dead weight on his shoulder, glowering. "Unless you have a degree in Earth--Terran--whatever medicine that you'd like to tell me about?"

Loki had raised a thoughtful eyebrow but said nothing. Barney glowered at him again. Loki couldn’t read _his_ mind, godsdammit. He was sure of that. 

Loki shrugged. Went forward into the ship. Barney followed. Found the right prisoner style med cot. Drops Clint into it. Now he triple checks the additional restraints on the med cot. Feels irrationally guilty about it, about what he's doing. He ignores that feeling.

Why did that little nagging voice always show up when he was around Clint? Stupid kid wasn't even _awake_.

Barney snorts, shakes his head. Yells that they're ready at Loki. Loki responds coolly. Punches in a code on the dashboard. Barney sighs. Brings out Clint’s phone. Starts to message the Avengers.

Hooo, boy.

This was gonna su-ck.

He pauses, unsure what to say. Or what, if any, emoticons to use. How do you tell the Avengers that they’ve been had? And that you’ve kidnapped a member of their team? _Clint here. Except, not really. It’s Barney. His brother. I have him. Jumped him. Almost killed him like, three different ways. He looks terrible now. You’re talking with a hologram down there in the canyon. At the "meeting" point. It's a distraction. We're leaving and taking him with us. Hahah, suckers. Bye!_

\--That sort of message didn’t seem appropriate. Or realistic.

And of a couple other things. Did Thor get texting? He wondered. Could Hulk hold a phone with those hands? Did Captain America even know what a smartphone was?

He scratched his head. Maybe he should just text Widow. Or Stark. They could figure it out…

Loki, shouting from the pilot’s seat. He sounded annoyed.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to send them a vision?!” he griped. Barney snorted again. “As if. They won’t believe you.”

“Thor would.” Loki says, irritated. Barney snorts again. “But nobody else.”

He rolls his eyes. Decides to just snap and send a picture. Widow isn’t stupid. She’ll figure out what’s going on.

He brings up the photo box. Finds himself trying to angle the camera so that Clint’s face doesn’t look quite as pale and still as it does here in the ship. Ooh, crap. How’d the kid get blood in his hair? Barney reaches out, tries clumsily wiping it off with his shirtsleeve. Nopenopenope. Made it worse. Smeared it allll over that side of Clint’s face, showin a cut running along right above his ear. Blood still tricklin down. Maybe he hit his head when he fell, after Barney’d tasered him in the neck? But it’s just a flesh wound. Probably nothing big. Regardless, blood doesn’t look good. Makes Clint look paler than he actually is.

Hulk’ll freak out.  
  
Barney tries tilting the camera the other way. Nope. Sucker punched and tazed though he'd been, Clint'd fought back pretty good before Barney'd gotten the upper hand. He'd had to punch the kid at least a couple times in the head and the neck. And now the bruises are gettin really green. Ugh. And purple, and swelling. Clint doesn’t look good from any angle, Barney realizes. He looks…awful. 

Well, he’d known that already. He’d seen it. Hell, he’d helped. He just hadn’t…Well. Whatever.

Barney snorts at his qualms. Just take the picture already. He does. Adds a caption.

_Plan changed. Await further developments. BB_

He checks it. Squints. What the hell is that? There’s a stupid thin little line trickling down outta the corner of Clint’s eye. Trailing through the sweat and the blood and the sand. 

Oh. Stupid kid had been cryin. Sort of. When'd he done that? Come to think of it, Clint had looked really scared when Loki'd shown up. Even worse when Loki'd started the mind control. But, well, Barney hadn't really been looking at Clint, then, exactly, he'd decided that his gun needed cleaning again. So he'd reassembled his firearm like, three times.

And Clint hated cryin.

Always had.

Barney could think of only, like, two times he’d seen his brother cry. In his entire life. Maybe. Usually he got all quiet and went off by himself. Practiced. Trained. Whatever. Until he could look people in the eyes again.

It was just a tear track, Barney. Get over it.

It was just—

—it was just—

—growin up, the little punk hadn’t cried much, not even when their dad beat him bloody for stupid things, Clint just screwed up his face and took it, if anything he’d gotten pissed. Barney remembered a five year old Clint painfully climbing his way back up from the kitchen floor after their dad had clocked him one for breaking a glass or something, he’d just glared and turned and limped away up to his room where he’d juryrigged a crossbow out of pencils and rubber bands by himself, and surrounded by his pillow fort had killed forty tousand orks, or at least that’s what Clint had told him the next time Barney snuck into his room to check on him.

Clint only cried when he felt useless. Or like he’d just screwed up something really bad for someone he’d wanted to help. Like that one time, right before the car accident that had killed them, Clint had mouthed off to Dad cuz Dad had been a jerk to Mom, and Dad had wound up, all set to whack him. Then turned around and hit Mom instead. Clint had gotten real quiet and just stared, stared, stared, and teared up a tiny, tiny bit, just like he had here cuz Barney had handed him over to—

Barney’s scowl twisted. He’d hated their dad too. He wasn’t like him at all.

He wanted to laugh at Clint for crying. Even just a little. _Haha, little baby, booohoooohooo, bein a hero’s made you sooooft. Cryin cuz you can’t help your friends, awwww, pooor baby, booofreakinghoohoohoo._

But somehow he couldn’t. His heart wasn’t in it. He just felt. Sick. Sort of. It didn’t matter. And he would have sounded exactly like Dad.

Oh, who cared. It was just a stupid picture.

Damn HD.

Stupid kid.

Barney snorts, gives up on the idea of doing a retake. It was just a picture. Any one would do.

So this one. Tear track and all. Whatever. Fine. He didn’t care. Only an idiot would care. The Avengers probably won’t even notice.

Loki’s revving the engines, now, warming up for take off.

The doppelgangers are just about at the end of their limits, any second now his will be disappearing into thin air. Clint’s will stay. Just to get the message across loud and clear. Get the Avengers to follow 'em. Speaking of the message, Loki and he better be ready to GO the second the Avengers get said message. Having them close enough to follow them through interstellar space is all well and good, but all the careful planning in the world won’t help them if Thor’s hammer breaks the sound barrier and then Hulk breaks both their necks.

Their ship rises off the ground. Sways slightly. Barney reaches out and grabs a bulkhead near his head for support.

The timer on his watch beeps. His doppelganger is gone. Clint’s will just be standing there. Knowing Loki, it’ll be doing something creepy, though. Maybe it’ll be smiling. But not a Clint smile. More like a shark smile. Or a Loki smile. Or maybe it’ll look the way Clint does now. Ashy-faced. Beaten up. Bloody. Sick.

Silent.

That would be a horrid shock, Barney thought. Think somebody’s fine, talkin to you, normal mission goin on, then bam, all of a sudden they’re insubstantial and maybe dying in front of you.

Barney blinks the thought away.

He hits send. The message is delivered.

A short pause.

Then roaring, faint but still very very very very VERY VERY angry, sounds from outside. Sounds like it came from the bottom of the canyon. A distant, furious THRUM of repulsors. A sonic boom. Yep, that would be Mjolnir breaking the sound barrier. Shootin to Thor’s hand. Ohhh boy.

Simultaneously, Clint’s phone is ringing, shrill and angry. ID is Tasha. Next simultaneous ID is Tony. Barney views them. Swallows back a gulp he didn’t know he had.

Blocks both calls. They can do this through text.

Three seconds later, Black Widow’s voice sounds throughout the cabin, iron hard and angry. Oh, geez, she’s Facetiming him. And the phone’s pickin up. What the—he tries switching the camera angle so it doesn’t face him, oh God, oh, God, oh God, he can’t—someone froze the controls—no matter how he flips the phone she’s there

—and he can’t break the connection—or turn the phone off—oh, geez—

YIII, her eyes are BURNING and she’s WHITE with fury—oh, geez—

“BARNEY BARTON, DON’T THINK YOU’LL GET AWAY WITH THIS, STARK JUST RIPPED THROUGH THE SOFTWARE ON THAT PHONE LIKE A PINATA, WHERE THE HELL IS MY PARTNER, YOU PUT HIM ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW!” Barney winces. Looks over at Loki who puts both palms up briefly in the air as if to say, “Don’t look at me, I’m not the negotiator here.”

Barney swallows again, puts on his best professional tone.

“I’m afraid he’s indisposed at the moment.” he says coolly, looking down at Clint’s still form. That much is true, anyway. “Anyway, that’s not the focus here. The plan of attack has changed. It’s on a bigger level, now. Clint is key and is going to help me neutralize the threat. Whether he wants to or not. You lot can stay behind or follow us. Your choice.”

“WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?!” Widow snarls. “PUT HIM ON THE PHONE!” She tilts the phone on her end, trying to angle for a better view of the inside of the cabin.

Stark’s voice and his face cut in, scarily quieter than Widow’s. Barney wouldn’t have thought the playboy genius could look, or sound, so dangerous. His eyes are steely. And his voice is cold. “—What the _hell_ are you playing at—“

Of course now Loki decides now is a good time to step in, geez, thanks a lot, partner—

“Hello, brother!” he calls merrily. A moment of petrified silence. Then Thor’s booming voice almost breaks the speakers in Clint’s phone, and does send Barney’s left eardrum ringing its way into agony.

“LOKI!” the Prince of Thunder roars, and the anger and fury in his voice only thinly mask the utter fear in it. The same emotions are plain on his open face too. “WHAT HAVE YOU—“

“Just taking matters into my own hands, brother.” Loki cheerfully replies. “Since you’re so attached to this planet, you’ve let larger matters slide out of control. I’m just doing my part.”

Another voice, a different voice. Cuts through the chatter and the madness and the inarticulate roaring on the other end of the line.

Blue eyes. Square jaw. Cold as iron. And just as hard. Barney resisted the sudden urge to curl up into a ball and suck his thumb. Captain America was mad at him and knew who he was. Oooohhhhhh God. Ohhhhh God. Ohhhh God.

He was gunna die.

“What,” the Captain asked icily, “are your demands?” Not that we’ll grant them, his tone and his face seemed to say, but this is what we usually ask backstabbing kidnappers right before we rip them apart and scatter them into the stratosphere.

Barney opened his mouth to squeak out a reply, but Loki cut in. “We have none!” he said politely. “We just require your friend’s assistance to save the known universe.”

“DID YOU ASK HIM?!” Widow, again. Grabbing the phone back from Cap.

“We, uh, tried.” Barney lied. A little. They hadn’t. Not really. He chanced a glance back at the still form on the bed. Then he saw the screen on the phone doing weird things. Realized Stark was swearing and ticking keys and suchlike on his end with almost religious fervor. A tiny blue light from the camera slot shot into life. Scanned the cabin. Barney bit back a yelp as it passed over him. Then it found Clint. Scanned him once, twice.

Russian cursing from the other end of the phone went up several notches. Somebody—several somebodies—started yelling Clint’s name. Barney winced away from the phone again. The Big Green guy was the loudest. He sounded…scared. And angry as a result. Very angry.

“—LINT!!”

“—awkeye!!”

“—lease—“

“—say somethin, Legolas—Katniss—Robin Hood—aw, comeon, Clint, Clint, hey, buddy, hey, pal, come on, say somethin, anythin, WHAT’D YOU BASTARDS DO TO

HIM?!!—“

“YOU MADE FEATHERS CRY, HULK GOING TO SMASH—“

Aw, great. They’d seen Clint thanks to Tony’s hacking the camera. In damning HD glory. That wasn’t good.

But Barney knew that they couldn’t have done this any other way.

Because he knew his brother. Clint wouldn’t have just helped him with this self-appointed mission. Not if he’d known Loki was behind this. At least, he would have had a lot of good questions and healthy disbelief and gotten the other Avengers and the Army and the United Nations and maybe even Asgard in on it STAT and, to be honest, they just didn’t really have time for that.

Like, really.

Because the universe was in danger.

But…more because Barney didn’t want to end up arrested and in jail for like, ten life sentences. And because he wanted the bounty that waited at the end of this if he played his cards right. Because yes, he was HYDRA. At least, a contractor for 'em.

Which was how Loki had found him in the first place. And how this whole clustercrap had started.

Loki’s grabbing the phone now, overriding Barney’s honestly very distracted and crappy attempts at placation.

“You want to help your friend, you want to see your friend, follow our trail.” he says, his voice brusque and arrogant as always. “If not, he may return to you once we are finished. If he can find his way, that is. He might be able to reach your system again in a few decades. Or he’ll perish far from your world and everything in it. It could be that he dies from his current injuries, if we accidentally permanently damaged him, or if the time under the mind control again fries what remains of his brain, or he takes a sudden turn for the worse far away from proper Midgardian aid. He might end up spread over the nearest intergalactic solar systems if our move against Thanos fails.”

Loki shrugs, looking utterly bored. “Your choice.”


	7. Proof Of Life

Loki flips the phone around, giving them a last good look at Clint. Barney steps away from the hullabaloo and Widow’s snarls of “You mind controlled him _again_ , you Frost Giant _bastard_?—“ and Thor’s numb “…Thanos? Brother, what—” and the Stark and the Captain’s and the Hulk’s mess of questions—

Barney, very glad not to be the one holding the phone anymore, moves back to his brother, looks down at him. Uncertain, for a moment, if he’s still breathing. Lying so still and so unnaturally quiet. Clint hasn’t responded once to the uproar filling the cabin. Or made the smallest reply to any of his team’s—his friends’—frantic questions.

Damn, those sedatives must have been strong.

 _Maybe too strong_ , the little voice says.

Also, mind control.

_Yes, Barney. Blame the mind control. That’s what’s really wrong here._

The woman’s voice, again. Saying something in Russian. Barney’s language skills were rusty, but he thought it was Russian for _Please_.

Maybe one finger twitches. A little. Can’t be sure.

Captain America’s strong voice over the phone. “—do we know that he’s still alive.” His voice isn’t cold, just even. Stating a possibility that none of them back there want to even acknowledge. One that Barney doesn’t much want to think about either. Hulk’s voice, roaring in anguish. Something blistering in Russian. “—proof of life.” he hears the Captain’s voice say, steady and controlled. “…talk to him. The real him. Not this holographic…not this. Not this thing here, with us, playing your message. I want irrefutable proof he’s still breathing.”

Loki rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Widow, I’m sure you recall our conversation in the Helicarrier. The one about splitting Barton’s skull. Really, my dear, your friend is so gullible. He’ll believe anything I show him.”

Without waiting for a reply, he flips the phone again, jabs a finger backwards at Clint’s still form. The figure on the bed jackknifes suddenly, convulses against the straps. Veins on the neck stand out. Hands clench into fists, strain at the cuffs. Barney startles back. But there’s no sound. Then he hears Clint’s sudden scream. Of pure terror, absolute agony. It cuts into what’s left of Barney’s soul like a knife, hitting him harder than he thought possible. His stomach twists in sudden, sympathetic pain. But Clint’s scream isn’t here. Not in the ship. Not with them.

It’s coming from the other side of the screen.

Barney catches a brief glimpse of the other display—whoever’s holding Widow’s phone has turned—giving him a view of the holographic-not-Clint that’s still in the canyon with the Avengers.

It’s screaming, eyes wide, staring at something. Staring at its hands. The fingertips. The arm bracer. Wrist guards. Everything.

Because everything is red. The doppelganger’s arms are scarlet to the elbows, dripping red down onto the canyon floor. Down onto—

Widow’s face.

She’s vivisected. Wide-eyed and dead on the canyon floor at the not-Clint’s feet. And the light’s just finished dying out of her eyes.

No, not Widow.

Another hologram.

Another, very realistic hologram.

Oh, God. The image of Tasha’s very painfully dead corpse is really disturbing. And Barney doesn’t even _like_ her that much.

The real Widow is still there, off to the side, pale as the corpse Loki’s showing Clint. Oh, gods. This was. This was. Yeah. Pretty damn disturbing. Stark’s throwing up in the corner. Hulk is crying. Thor looks like he’s going to join Stark. Cap’s gone white.

Clint’s doppelganger’s still screaming, fallen onto its knees.

Screaming.

Screaming with his little brother’s voice. In terror. In loss. And in absolute horror.

The not-Clint’s eyes wrench shut, it clutches its head as if it will split apart. The image’s fingers stiffen into claws for a moment, then frantically keep moving. Press up against its eyes, clamp over its ears. As if to block out something too terrible to see and then drown out an awful voice that only it can hear. Doesn’t seem to work, though.

It presses its hands harder against its head, falls onto its side, curls up as if that might make what it saw go away, but it doesn’t, and the scream goes on, and on, and on, and on, until the real Clint runs out of air and the thing in the canyon does too, gasps for breath once, twice. A dreadful, shredded little whine tears its way out of its throat, the sound small animals make when they’ve been kicked one too many times.

Loki angles their screen a little. Gives the group in the canyon a better view of the ship. Of the medical cot. Of Clint’s bloody, shaking, silent form.

Then Loki lets Clint open his eyes, just a crack. Has him stare at the tiny, impersonal screen.

Doesn’t let him say anything, though.

For a few moments, there’s no other sound than Clint’s ragged breathing from the other side of the call. When it comes, Loki’s voice is poisonously sweet.

“Good enough for you?”

Someone sobs something in Russian. Cap’s voice, thick. Cracking.

“—enough. Stop—“

Loki smiles, eyes glowing white again with insanity and malice.

“But I forgot. You wanted _irrefutable_ proof.” he says sweetly.

The scream starts again.

Shaken, Barney looks back at Clint. The real Clint’s neck is arched back, now, neck muscles tight and straining, it’s all utterly silent here in the ship, except for the sounds coming in over the call, but his brother’s hands are white-knuckled in pain, his face is twisted, his eyes squeezed shut—another quick glint at the corner of one eye, gone almost before Barney sees it—

Barney swallows hard, feels something from long ago and far away twist inside him, start to shake loose inside his mind—

—stop, it, stoppit, stoppit, **_stoppit_** —

—and as Clint’s voice cries out again on the other end of the phone, all of a sudden Barney isn’t here, in a spaceship, his brother isn’t an Avenger who sold him out to the cops years ago, they aren’t with gods and super soldiers and super spies and weird guys out of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons--

\--they’re just kids in their normal American home with their dad who didn’t like something Clint said one day and who grabbed his arm, twisted it backwards, snapped the elbow with a pop, and Clint’s screaming and curled up around his arm and Dad’s laughing and Barney can’t take it anymore and—

—and he takes a step forwards.

Grabs another syringe out of his belt. This one is the last dose of sedative. The last one he can give him for now. A real strong one. Should do the trick. He hopes.

Slams it into the real Clint’s neck. Injects it swiftly.

Clint’s cry chokes off midway. He chokes. His body spasms, once, twice. Three times. Then his body loosens all at once, wrung out and exhausted. He collapses back down onto the cot’s hard mattress, his blank eyes opening wide to stare up at the spaceship’s dark ceiling panels. Barney catches his brother’s head before it smashes down onto the cot, eases it down onto the thin pillows. Slowly. Carefully. Sees sweat and blood and sand got into Clint’s eyes at some point, what with all the shaking and the convulsing and stuff. He shakes out his sleeve again, bends down a little, grabs his water bottle from his belt, pops the top open with his teeth, steadies Clint’s head with one hand, and uses his other dampened shirtsleeve to wipe the worst out of Clint’s eyes. Careful, careful, careful. He needs those eyes. Um, to fight Thanos. To fight Thanos with.

Barney also might have taken care of any potentially embarrassing but certainly non-existent tear marks while doing so as well.

Geez. What a stupid kid.

He remembers something, turns around. Glares over at Loki’s staring, silent form. The jerkass god is still holding the phone in a loose-fingered grip.

“Stop _killin_ him.” he snarls. “You said we _needed_ him. So _need_ him.”

Loki stares at him and, just for a second, his eyes glow white. And Barney realizes that he just pissed off a cray-cray Asgardian god. In his own spaceship.

Then Loki blinks. Eyes go back to blue. He shrugs. Turns back to the small screen. Barney watches him narrowly. Unsure of what he’ll do next. The trickster god winks at the screen, presses a couple of buttons—the camera flashes—Barney only now realizes that he’s taking a selfie with himself and Clint in the background, really, Loki, what the _hell_ —and then he tosses the phone over at Barney who reaches out with one hand and automatically snags it out of the air.

Loki has ended the call. Has started punching in the launch sequence. They’re off. With a roar and a clatter of engines.


	8. Loki's Plan

Barney’s glad they’re leaving. He didn’t really like hearing the repercussions of his actions. Or know that the longer they talked, the greater their chances of being ripped apart by a giant green rage monster became.

But he blinks at the selfie. He hadn’t realized he still had his hand resting on Clint’s head. Or that he’d looked so…pissed. Loki was beaming in the foreground of the picture, looked perfectly charming. As always. Barney shuddered. Creep. But…Clint looked bad. Barney looked down at him, compared the picture and the person before him. Pale as death, blood on one side of his face, dark circles growing under the eyes.

Yep. Fighting mind control would do that to you.

And getting tortured.

And gettin kidnapped before that.

Man. He looked bad. But at least he was quiet now.

Loki turns round, smiling sunnily, just as if he hadn’t been easily torturing someone to the point of insanity five seconds before.

“Buckle in, my friend.” he said cheerfully. “We are off on our adventure!”

Barney glowered at him, sat down in the passenger seat next to Clint. Carefully buckled in.

“They can follow us?”

“Oh yes.” Loki said easily. “We left just in the nick of time. Five more ticks and they would have ripped us limb from limb. I hit send on the selfie just as the green one found us and started reaching for our ship’s landing gear.”

Barney swallowed. Hard.

“Oh. Nice. So they’ll follow us, then?”

“Naturally. Did you like what I did with your brother?”

Barney eyed him narrowly. Loki grinned back at him in the rearview monitor. “No.” Barney said icily, stubbornly crossing his arms. “We’re supposed to be able to use him. Not torture him ta death before we even get started. Plus, what’s the point of me drugging him senseless in the desert so you can concentrate on our route, if you’re only goin to torture him awake minutes later to mess with your brother and his pals? He ODs on sedatives durin this trip, or you migraine pilot us straight into a star because he starts screaming all of a sudden again, it’s not on me.”

Loki looked indignant. “My friend. I did no such thing. I hazarded nothing from my second, stronger connection to your kin. I merely gave our mutual acquaintance a nightmare.”

Barney felt his eyebrows climb into his dirty hair. “A nightmare.”

Loki smiled. It showed most of his teeth. “A very realistic nightmare.”

Barney grunted. Loki shifted sheepishly in his seat. “Just about that red-haired partner of his. I may have led him to believe he succeeded in killing her, quite, er, graphically, during his mission in New York for me a few years ago. And, um. I may then have possibly ignited every pain receptor in his nervous system.”

Barney’s jaw tightened. “That. counts. as. torture.”

Loki pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“It's two counts! Mental AND physical!”

“The dream was merely a brief, if vivid, illusion. And pain receptors stop firing. Eventually.”

Barney decided to ignore him. Turned his attention to Clint. Had to make sure their ticket to defeating Thanos didn’t just roll over and die during the journey there.  
Not that he could.

Roll over.

Those straps were pretty tight.

He checked them again.

Just to make sure. As he did that, he noticed Clint’s hands were balled into fists. Nails digging into the palms. Barney frowned at the sight. That would play hell with his aim, that’s for sure. After (guiltily) loosening the cuffs so they were no longer cutting off circulation, he worked first the fingers of one hand, than the other, open.

Kneaded the taunt muscles with his own scarred fingers. Made the tense muscles relax. Tried to, anyway. Found some gauze. Wrapped up the cuts.

It took awhile.

He was okay with that.

Hands were done. But that cut over his eye would be a problem too. Bleed into his vision while he was shootin. Should probably tape that up too.

Tch, stupid kid.

They flew on for a while in silence.

Loki sat up at the pilot’s seat, punching in the coordinates. Doublechecking their course. Barney tucks the phone away, finishes quadruple checking that his brother is securely, well, secured, bandaged hands lying strapped at his sides, cut above his eye cleaned and taped, and then folds his own arms and glares down at him.

Stupid kid. Stupid, stupid, stupid kid.

Stupid. Just, stupid.

Of course it had to be him that was the key to Loki’s little plan.

Taking down Thanos.

Sure, no problem.

Three days ago he hadn’t known what the hell a Thanos was.

But that was the world they lived in now. Things could change in the blink of an eye.

Or a finger snap.

Loki had tracked him down, in Nepal, of all places, during a HYDRA arms deal gone south, and not-so-subtly encouraged—Barney shivered at the memory of a single finger snap turning an overhanging cliff into giant ice fingers dangling him over the edge of a yawning precipice—Barney to listen to him. Turns out Loki had some advance intel. About another planned invasion of earth.

Turns out Loki hadn’t been the big guns behind the first one either, the one that had wrecked most of New York. Some guy called Thanos had orchestrated it. Loki hadn’t said as much, but Barney was a sharp guy and had realized that Thanos had had more than a little say in Loki’s actions during that time.

Like being able to mind control an Asgardian. Or Ice Giant. Or whatever Loki really was.

Which seemed…impressive. And not something to be taken lightly.

What’s a Thanos, Barney had asked. Loki had laughed. The sound had not been a nice one.

“A Titan.”

“A wha?”

“An ancient being of immense power and cunning.”

“There are MORE of them?”

“Not exactly. He killed the rest.”

Barney had sworn, kicked out at the ice in reflexed surprise.

“What?! WHY?!”

“I believe he was bored. And it was something to do.”

Barney’d let out a series of frightened expletives that should have chipped ice off the frozen steppes. Loki had laughed. And they’d talked more. With a mix of his typical charm and wheedling, Barney had managed to talk Loki down from the (picturesque, if terrifying and freezing) steppes and they’d finished their talk in the corner of a tiny Nepalese tavern, Barney throwing down shots of fiery liquor and Loki eyeing him disdainfully over the rim of an apparently never-ending mug of tea.

“…and _Clint_ is part of your plan?” Barney said woozily. All this talk of gods and universes and infinity stones was making his head hurt. But Loki’ s mention of a “priceless treasure” had caught his interest. Oh, and that the end of the world could come if no one did anything about Thanos’ plans. That’d be bad for business too. In a world sucked dry of life, no one would hire men like Barney to do much of anything. Barney didn’t like the thought of being dead. He never had.  
And he’d kept fairly close track of what was goin on with the Avengers and all that crap. Just cuz he hated his brother’s guts didn’t mean he couldn’t know what was going on with the guy.

Especially when Clint rubbed shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the world.

And especially when Barney was—sometimes—part of the organization waiting in the shadows to take Clint’s organization down, when the time and the price was right.

Loki leaned forward. “I’m here because you are, I believe, the only surviving blood relation of the archer, Clint Barton.” Barney’s mouth quirked sideways in a very sour smile.

“That’s my lil' bro. The guy who’s brain you addled as soon as you stepped into our world. The one singlehandedly responsible for almost taking down SHIELD.” Barney laughed into the depths of his mug. “That clustercrap he started on the Helicarrier and then in New York almost threw me out of a job.” He set the mug down, motioned for another. “Which is ironic.” he grumbled to himself.

Loki studied him, looking slightly puzzled. “Is that what they’re saying.”

“That New York was a clustercrap? I don’ know where you live, pal, but if I gotta explain that a clustercrap is a much nicer word for a clusterf—“

Loki’s eyes flashed white for an instant as he made an irritated gesture. Outside the window, three tons of ice slid off the opposite mountain wall and plummeted into the valley below. Barney blinked out the window, then stared wide eyed at his drinking buddy. He wisely decided to stop talking.

Loki looked surprised. Then slightly chagrined. “I”m not used to the extent of my powers yet.” he muttered. His eyes flashed momentarily with simple, absolute fury. “Being under Thanos’ control…altered my powers somewhat. I’m still working out the…knots.” Barney shrugged. Got another beer. Logged away the white flash of Loki’s eyes as something to watch out for.

They waited until the echoes and the shocked screaming had stopped. Then Loki continued.

“They’re saying I addled Barton’s mind?”

“Clint’s mind, yeah. I guess he got better or something. They let him into their special club at least. Which was good, cuz SHIELD sure doesn’t want him anymore.”

Loki’s eyes glinted white for a moment. “Yes. The Avengers. Stark mentioned that.”

Barney shrugged. Pretended he didn’t really care. “Yeah. Guess so. Anyway, he hangs out with them. Goes on missions from time to time. Saves the day, hero stuff. Of course, he’s waaaaay outta his league, but…”

Loki was staring at him again, fascinated. He’d put his teacup down.

“It seems to me,” he said, smiling slightly, “that you do not comprehend the nature of your brother’s abilities, natural or unnatural, in the slightest.”

Barney stared blankly at him through the bottom of his beer mug. “Whahuh?” he asked thickly.

Loki thinned his lips, tried again. “What I mean to say,” he said primly, “is that you do not, oh, how do they say, get it.”

“Still dunno what you mean.”

Loki’s eyes flamed briefly in extreme displeasure. “Then listen.” He leaned forward.

“What if I were to tell you that your brother has particular capabilities. Ones that make him uniquely, ah, qualified to stand against Thanos when he inevitably arrives. As a matter of fact, that I chose him, formed him, when I first came, to be instrumental in working against Thanos.” His voice dropped lower. “And that Thanos is, at last, coming.”

Barney swallowed hard.

“Why are you tellin me all this? I’m just another regular vanilla mortal. A pretty badass one, mind, but still. Nowhere near your weight class.”

Loki looked singularly unimpressed. “When I came the first time, I scanned your brother’s mind. I saw in it, a, shall we say, weakness. You are one of the few cracks in his armor.”

Barney scoffed. Threw back another shot. “I dunno about that.” he said, old bitterness corroding his tone. Loki breathed out hard through his nose. “Your angsty existential doubt aside, both your relation to the Hawkeye and your high position in both HYDRA and the FBI lends itself to my plan as well. Thanos cannot triumph. That we both agree.”

“Too right.” Barney said fervently. “I need this world livin.”

“What if I were to say that your brother’s mind holds the, ah, key, as it were, to defeating Thanos? That if we were to…make use…of his abilities, we could stop Thanos’ second—and, I assure you, much greater invasion—before it begins? And,” Loki’s eyes had glinted, “that there would be great rewards for us as a result.”

Barney felt his heart begin to race. He’d leaned forward.

“I’m listening.”


	9. Okay, This Looks Bad

Clint woke up slowly, painfully. From the moment when he’d started stirring, to when he’d actually looked up at Barney, it’d taken him at least ten minutes to fully open his eyes.

But the first thing he did, once he realized where he was, was to flinch away from Barney. Tried sitting up. Not that he could. The straps around the cot took care of that.

Clint’s forehead furrowed. His gaze flickered down to his cuffs, the straps holding him down. Back up to Barney. Expression went from absolutely disoriented to nerve wrackingly wary. He didn’t flinch again, but definitely tensed up whenever Barney moved so much as a finger towards him.

Barney snorted at that. So Clint remembered their fight. He remembered that much.

Barney was glad Clint remembered something. And he sure didn’t care about the flinching. Not in the least. Barney yawned exaggeratedly, put down the gun he’d been half-heartedly cleaning. Leaned over. Squinted down at his brother.

“So.” he said. “How ya feelin?”

Clint blinked, didn’t say anything. Oh, right. The mind control. His brother just looked at him, eyes wide.

And utterly, totally terrified. No walls of snark, or bluffing, or pretending whatsoever. Barney blinked. Damn. That was new. The drugs had worn off, but Clint must be still pretty out of it. Maybe he still thought he’d dissected Black Widow under Loki’s mind control whammy. He looked like he thought he had.

Barney coughed, then remembered he was a hardened, experienced mercenary and very good at his job.

“Uh, yeah. So, those sedatives should have already worn off, but I gotta leave the restraints on still, you’ll understand that, necessary precaution, blahdeblahblah.”

He jerked a thumb out at the porthole window. “You remember where you are?”

A blank look.

“You’re in space. So that’s fun.”

Clint looking bewildered. Almost sick.

Uh.

“Yer friends are following us.” Barney added. “Ya know, Iron Jerk, Green Guy, Captain Sparkle Pants, LOTOR. And Tasha.” he added, almost as an afterthought. He was checking his gun for the thousandth time that day, more to have something to do with his hands than anything else. He slid his gaze from the gun’s very polished slide over to the cot, saw that his words were, in point of fact, not reassuring his brother. If anything they were making him more frantic, more agitated. More worried.

Oh. Right. Of course he’d be worried for his team. Even with the knowledge that Tasha was still, you know, breathing. His bandaged fingers had furrowed the thin sheets beneath them, his breathing was hitching. Dammit, Barney, you’re an idiot. He doesn’t want them coming after him, he’s afraid Loki will set him loose on em and he’ll rip their hearts out of their sternums with his bare hands and his teeth.

Geez. The last time Clint had been this scared was on that night with Alan and the money and the—

Barney stopped himself from reaching for the backup sedatives with an effort.

“Just, don’t freak out.” he said, annoyed both at his brother and at himself.

“Lemme explain what’s goin on, yeah?”

Clint sayin nothin. Just lookin at him. Barney sighed. Leaned back in his chair.

“Awright, so. I know this looks bad. And you’re probably pissed off at me. And I can see that. But hear me out, okay, bro? Here’s how it is. Loki wasn’t the mastermind behind New York. Yeah, I know. Wierd, huh?

Turns out it was this purple guy named Thanos. He’s a Titan or something. Did a mind whammy on Loki, the way Loki did a mind whammy on you. Thing is, he’s coming straight to Earth now, wants to do a second and permanent invasion.

Wants these things called Infinity Stones or somethin that we have a couple of. Point is, we can’t let him get to Earth in the first place. He gets there, show’s over. So we’re goin to his base first.

Thing is, Thanos can control minds. Finds its the easiest way to make his guys obey him, do whatever he wants. Cheats to get what he wants. So we really can’t let him get to Earth. And even the Avengers, they really can’t stop him, if he decides to mind control them, or the Asgardian army, or anybody, we’d only make things worse for ourselves. And he would just take us over, if we didn’t all kill ourselves tryin to fight him first.

And Loki, was, uh, actually mind controlled for most of that first invasion too. And, uh, the mind control he laid on you was Thanos’ mind control. Mostly. But, here’s the thing.”

Barney said the next few words very carefully. “You’re different.”

He blew out a breath. How to explain this. “Loki, well. When Loki came through the Tesseract gate, he had a couple seconds where he could fight back. You know. Traveling through the gate shook Thanos’ hold on his brain. The way Tasha rattling your brain in the Helicarrier shook you free. But Loki knew he couldn’t hold it all off his own or reach out to the big hitters for help. Thanos was lookin too much at him and at them, since they all had so much power. So Loki was lookin around for somebody who would slip under Thanos’ radar.

And you popped up almost at once. Loki can, uh, see a lot about people. Somethin about minds, and pasts…and you were, like, the first person who saw him coming, who fought him, who survived the first minute with him. You pushed Fury out of the way, you returned fire, you kept your head when otherworldly hell just literally walked in your door. And Loki picked up on that. Saw you had ‘heart.’ ” Barney made finger quotes.

“That’s why he chose you. Mind-controlled you first. Made you the first in Thanos’ army on Earth. But he warped the code a little.”

Barney leaned in.

“He gave you an out when Thanos tries to mind control you, bro. You can break it.”


	10. An Absolutely Fantastic Plan

Barney sat back, feeling a long-forgotten happy grin try to creak over his face.

“Something like immunization. You’ve already been mind controlled once by Loki. So you’re immune to it if Thanos tries it. Cool, huh?”

This feeling of impressed comradie was kinda nice, somehow. Sure, it was annoying as hell that his little brother was gonna be the key to save the planet, like Clint needed a bigger ego—

—well, actually, his brother’s self-esteem was terrible, it could use every little boost it could get—

—but hey, this was pretty cool, if you thought about it, and he was sorta proud of his little bro, in a wierd way, and Clint would probably agree with him on something for the first time in over a decade and maybe he’d grin back and—

…Nothing.

Clint still just looked blank. His eyes never left Barney’s face, but there was barely any trace of the quick, almost impatient intelligence that usually burned behind his younger brother’s eyes. The fires were dimmed. Almost gone. Dull.

“Didja get all that?” Barney asked. Clint blinked back at him, sluggish and slow. He shook his head, once, eyes unsure, uncertain. Shit. Maybe he’d understand better if he was able to ask questions. That was how he had learned in grade school.

“You sure you can’t turn that damn mind control off?” Barney yelled up towards the front. Loki punched in a few more commands into the keyboard above his head and replied without even turning back.

“Absolutely out of the question.”

“Why?!” Barney felt cranky for no good reason, felt an unreasoning burning desire to throw wrenches into Loki’s gears. Why, he didn’t know. Maybe Clint was starting to rub off on him. Besides, it just didn’t feel normal for Clint to not be sayin anythin. And he wasn’t looking like himself. All…out of it. Not sharp. Not observant. His eyes still moved. Flicking all around. But it was a scared kind of observing, not the sharp, interested type of observing.

A lot more scared than Clint usually ever showed. Well, had ever really showed since he was four years old, that was. Barney huffed out an annoyed breath. Right now, his Avenger brother was seesawing between absolutely blank and absolutely freaked out. Fear of Loki’s mind control and his trust issues with his brother probably didn’t help.

 _And whose fault is that_ , the little voice asked.

 _Shut up._ Barney told it.

Crap. This whole situation wasn’t good.

“I cannot stop the mind control because, mortal, we are flying into Thanos’ stronghold and he’s expecting a prisoner.”

“Waitwaitwait, what, that wasn’t the plan you told me!” Barney objected.

Loki’s sigh expressed more exasperation than a thousand mothers.

“I said we have to get in to see Thanos. Me, just coming in with no prior warning? And bringing a Midgardian in tow? He’ll expecting a very good reason for it. Like us bringing a prisoner. Namely, one of the Avengers. Your Clint is that prisoner.”

“Yeah, but—“ Barney realized he’d sort of grabbed at Clint’s hand protectively at the thought of just, just, handing him over to an evil intergalactic overlord. He glowered at himself, pretended he was just checking Clint’s pulse. Still didn’t quite let go of Clint’s bandaged wrist, though. Clint had tensed, tried to jerk his hand away, couldn’t. Now he was nervously watchin him out of the corner of his eye. Barney didn’t know why that bothered him so much.

Until he remembered that was how Clint had looked at Dad.

He unceremoniously dropped Clint’s wrist.

Enough of this crap. Focus on the mission. He had an evil intergalactic emperor with treasure ripe for the taking, dammit.

“Your little memory and nerve ending trick back there did somethin to our _asset_!” Barney yelled towards the front, finding refuge from his feelings in focusing on the thought of wealth and the plan to get much more of it. “Ever since he woke up he’s not actin _normal_ , he’s acting all _jumpy_.”

“Of course he’s not acting normal.” Loki said, as if Barney was stupid. “I’m taking him to the greatest warlord of all space and time, I need him to start this off as unnormal as possible. That’s why I struck his mind so hard before we left. The little “memory and nerve ending trick”, as you call it. Maybe it escaped your attention when you were trying to drink yourself under the table in Nepal, but allow me to make myself clear. Your brother may be able to break Thanos’ mind control, but he can only break it once. He’s not absolutely invulnerable to Thanos’ abilities, he’s our ace in the hole when Thanos least expects it.”

Barney felt his stomach twist. “You gave him the psychic equivalent of a nuke? And he’s only got one shot at taking down Thanos? That’s not the plan you told me.” he said mulishly. He needed to know the plan, dammit. He needed to know what would _happen_.

“Fine.” Loki flipped off his headset. Twisted around in his seat. Glared back at them.

“We’re going into Thanos’ base. You are my new lackey in HYDRA—don’t interrupt—and with luck he won’t give you a second glance. You and I grabbed Clint during a mission and brought him here against his will. All is true so far. He’ll see as much when he scans our memories.”

Barney made a disgusted face. But there was no help for it. Creepy purple jerkwad had major trust issues. And was an evil overlord. Loki continued.

“Clint is known to be the weakest Avenger, and it stands to reason you and I would snatch the opportunity to grab him to try and get in favor with Thanos. At all events, having an Avenger in his power will make it easier for him when he invades Earth—“

“—whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy, we’re makin sure that DOESN’T happen, righ—“

“I SAID,” Loki snarled, “DO NOT INTERRUPT.”

A thin, cold sensation pricked at Barney’s skin. A sudden, sharp pain in his sternum. He looked down. A thin, tiny blade of ice, no larger than a fingernail, had started to form there, digging into his chest. He instinctively caught his breath. Regretted it. Looked up, whey-faced. Caught sight of Loki’s flat and glowing white eyes. Great.

His ally’s powers—along with his sanity—were seesawing again. Perfect.

“I can make them grow from the inside too.” Loki said, his tone even and very, very controlled. “Don’t tempt me.”

Barney swallowed hard. Fought back the image of gigantic ice shards suddenly jutting out of his body at wildly painful and fatal angles. Slid a look over at Clint.  
Kid was still out of it, eyes only barely tracking the conversation. His glance might have lingered for a couple miliseconds on the ice shard glinting out of Barney’s tie like a potentially fatal tiepin. They might have widened slightly. But the kid hadn’t given much more of a response, though. Barney coughed. Slid one hand over the pommel of his gun. At this point it was more like a comfort blanket than anything else.

“What were you…sayin?” he rasped. Loki smiled. The white glow faded. “As I was saying. Having an Avenger under his control will make his invasion easier. Even more poetic. Given that it is the same Avenger who helped me in the first one. Thanos will adjust his plans for the invasion accordingly. And when he tortures Clint, Clint will confirm our story and cement our place in Thanos’ plans. Because our story is true, based on what Clint knows.”

“TORTURE?!! WHAT THE—OW, AUGH, DAMMIT!!”

Loki sighed feelingly, waited for Barney’s howl to fade.

“Meanwhile,” he said reprovingly, “the Avengers will be racing here. They’re probably no more than half a day or so behind us. At most.”

“Oh, at most.” Barney snarked, mostly to himself. “Great.”

Loki glared at him. Barney shut up, gingerly massaging the now knuckle-sized, steel-strength splinter angled sharply on his chest, splitting through the threads on his tie.

“When they arrive and attack Thanos’ stronghold—along with the other parties that I’ve arranged to simultaneously do so—that will give us the perfect chance to steal Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet and give it to my mother.”

“Ah, question, not interruption.”

“Proceed.”

“First, we’re givin the Infinity Gauntlet…to your mom?”

“She is the only one who knows how to destroy it. It’s not yet complete, and it’s never going to be. She’ll help us eliminate it once and for all.”

“Yeah, okay, but…we’re gonna trust that she’ll just…do that?”

Loki just looked at him. Barney’s hands flew up in the air in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay, man, all right. Just…ultimate power corrupts absolutely, or something.”

Loki’s expression didn’t change. “She’s my mother. And she’s offering a reward to anyone who retrieves that dangerous artifact from that maniac.”

A grin lit up Barney’s face, and he rubbed his hands together. “Okeydokey then. To Asgard the Gauntlet shall go. Second question. Other parties?”

“Other interested parties. They hate Thanos as well. If our attacks happen simultaneously, so much the better.”

“But they’re not coordinated?”

Loki’s smile was as sharp as a midwinter frost. “A little chaos never hurt anyone. Except maybe Thanos.”

Barney let that one go and chanced another look down at his brother.

“Uh…when does Clint help us out with the plan?”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“When is he gonna break out and fight Thanos? He should know that part of the plan, right?”

Loki shrugged. “You’ve already said too much.”

Barney blinked, nonplussed. “Huh?”

Loki looked over his shoulder, being as condesceding as an Asgardian god could. He flipped the controls to autopilot, stood up, stretched like a luxiourous cat.

Shambled over to the cot. Looked down at Clint.

It was probably all Barney’s imagination that Clint went a few shades paler. From anger or fear, it was hard to tell. Maybe both. His gaze flicked off to the side.

Stubbornly stayed there. He wasn’t looking at Loki.

Or Barney.

Loki’s eyes furrowed slightly and he sighed. Then he leaned down, grabbed Clint’s chin, and forced it around until they were facing each other eye to eye again.

Except that Clint had shut his eyes tight.

Loki grumbled to himself and then muttered something in a strange tongue. Ice crackled into existence around his fingernails, turned his hand blue with spiraling designs of burning frost. Which had to have hurt.

Clint screamed, thrashed as much as he could. Which wasn’t much. Kept his eyes screwed shut.

Barney felt his stomach turn to water, again, not that he cared or anything—and then pain shot through his hand. He realized he’d snatched hold of Clint’s good hand that was hanging off the side of the cot at some point. Maybe when Loki had started freezing his heart from the outside in. And that now his little brother was squeezing back so hard that Barney felt his knuckles crack. Ow. Stupid little—

Loki’s eyes flashing white—

—shattering pain in his chest—look down—oh, wow, oh, shit, that ice shard’s the size of his finger now, and it’s growin, growin, hey hey hey, not partta the plan, not partta the plan—

Loki snarling something in another language down at Clint—jerks Clint’s head roughly over towards Barney, but Loki wasn’t talkin to Barney, he was talkin to Clint, what’s he sayin, what’s he—

Barney didn’t understand Asgardian, but suddenly Loki’s meaning was all too plain—

_—or your brother dies—_

—at least that’s what it probably is, the pain’s intensifyin—

—Barney is so surprised he can’t do much, he just gurgles, just for a second, he can’t help himself that ice shard is really cold now and it really hurts—

Clint’s eyes shoot open at the sound, just for a milisecond, tries to find Barney. Is _scared_. For _Barney_. The guy who sold him out, this is, what, twice now, by all rights the kid should hate him—Barney just stares back at Clint—

—but Loki’s turned his brother’s face back so now Clint’s horrified eyes meet’s Loki’s blazing ones instead.

Mistake.

Loki smirks. And says a few words in Asgardian.

Barney blinks. He blinks because he finds he understands them. Like, actually understands what the crazy god is saying. Maybe it’s because he and Loki are partners. Maybe it’s because Loki is talking to Clint, and the kid’s bloody fingers are digging into Barney’s palm so hard that his skin is breaking. Maybe it’s because the pyschological whammy is so strong that it’s making ice frost over the control panels and the forward viewscreen.

Regardless, Barney hears the words.

And it’s like their dad is in the room with them again.

The only thing missing is the smell of the booze.

_**Weak—** _

_**—stupid--** _  
_**—worthless--** _

_**\--hindrance** _  
_**—burden.** _

  
_**—don’t help anyone** _  
_**—make things worse.** _

  
_**—You’re weak and you’ve failed.** _  
_**—And you know I’m right.** _

***

Barney never thought you could see the moment when somebody’s mind broke. Bones, yes. Obviously. Fingers? Legs? Elbows? Sure. They’re supposed to bend certain ways, be straight in some places and fit into others. Something’s wrong with them, it’s obvious. Somebody falls fifty feet, hits the ground, you can see exactly when and right where they ain’t right no more. You know how what broke, broke, and where the damage is.

But with a mind?

How would you know?

But Barney does. He sees Loki, with nothing more than a held look and a few phrases, rip his brother’s mind into bits like a torn piece of tissue paper. Everything in Clint’s eyes that had been locked down, held back—every piece of his stupid, stubborn self, every withheld acidic retort or angry word or his very, _very_ badly hidden stupid _altruism_ that always always _always_ had gotten the little punk into trouble—

—every bit of Clint that had been buried, waiting, frozen behind Loki’s original mind control in the desert—had just now…shattered.

In front of Barney’s very eyes, everything that had made his brother _Clint_ had just broken into bits and disappeared.

What was left, looking out at the world through Clint’s eyes, was jagged. Staring. Sightless.

Everything as un-Clint-like as could be.

There’s not the slightest chance of it—it’s no longer Clint, it’s no longer his brother—not the slightest chance of it ever saying anything beyond, maybe, big maybe, “yes” or “no” to simple questions.

He wouldn’t be able to _think_.

Not ever again.

Oh.

So that’s what a broken mind looked like.

And Barney realizes, with a sick little feeling in the pit of his stomach—oh, this is what being _used_ feels like—that Loki—at least, this white-eyed, laughing, insane Loki—had never intended on including Clint in the plan. At all.

His own voice cracks a little. He hadn’t thought it would.

“Wha—why’d you—“

“What? Shatter his cognitive abilities? All I did was tell him—quite strongly—what he already knew about himself. I just had to bring those thoughts to the forefront.”

Loki shoots Barney a very irritated look. “And I had to do _that_ because you told him the plan, numbskull. If Thanos realizes Clint thinks he can beat him when he questions him, he’ll see what we’re doing and skin us all alive. This way Thanos can interrogate him to corroborate our story, and then use him for his own ends. Until I, oh, what’s your word, restart Clint's mind again. If we need him to be able to think.”

Barney felt what had been his heart stutter a little at this. “If we—?” He licked his lips. Tried again. “You, you said he was the key to—”

Loki waved him off impatiently. “I told you I have several plans in place. And the Avengers are coming to fight regardless. Now here come Thanos’ escort ships. So shut up and don’t say anything.”

Barney had no problem doing that.

It may have been completely irrational, but he had a sudden, awful feeling that he didn’t really want to get the Infinity Gauntlet now. Reward or no reward.

Because if he got it, he’d have to deliver it to Loki’s mom, who was Thor’s mom, who was Queen Freya.

Who knew Clint. Who he’d helped a couple times, the rumor mill had it. On his adventures. She’d helped him back. Healed some pretty nasty wounds. Once or twice.

Barney’d seen pictures, in the files. She looked…motherly. Kind. Like a good person. And she sounded like a nice lady.

But she wouldn’t like him.

He didn’t think.

Oh.

He was still holding Clint’s hand.

Which wasn’t. Uh. Clutching his anymore. It’d stopped. Right after the mind thingy had ended. Just…just stopped workin on its own. The way a puppet drops to the floor after its strings are cut.

Fingers were still kinda curled, a little, though. Maybe that counted as a sign of cognitive activity.

No. No, it didn’t.

Stupid kid. Stupid, stupid kid.

No.

Stupid him.


	11. In Which Bucky Barnes Is Both Bored and an Unexpected Badass

All he had wanted that day was to was go out and get a couple of plums. Or the Wakandan equivalent of plums, anyway.

Seriously.

Nursing a splitting headache and rubbing the back of his head with his metal arm, Bucky snarled something to himself about how running everyday errands—even in the supposedly safe nation of Wakanda—somehow always turned into a matter of life or death, and grumpily decided to try and communicate with his fellow prisoner again.

“Hey.”

No reply from the cell on the other end of the passage. Whoever’d been in there when Bucky’d woken up from his—literal—alien abduction was still passed out on their side, back to him, and only visible as a jumbled heap of shadows. Probably drooling—or bleeding—on the cold stone floor. Wouldn’t be good for their neck once they woke up. Bucky knew from tired experience.

“Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.”

Bucky stopped, reconsidered his vocabulary. Shrugged. Tried again. “HEY.”

Nuthin.

He sighed, sat back down on his hard cot. Noted with apathetic interest that he was taking this pretty well in stride.

Well. He took comfort in knowing that he’d gotten the Chitari away from the Wakandan capital, at least. He’d been planning to go out and buy breakfast before anyone else woke up in the palace, but T’Challa had challenged him to a morning match. So he’d been sparring with the Wakandan king in the palace’s training arena when the screaming started. They’d dashed out, seen a Chitari warship hovering over the marketplace—how the hell had that gotten past the Wakandan satellites—and figured out in fairly short order that the aliens had been there for one purpose.

Him. Somethin about friend of Captain America, pawn of the Many Headed League, blahdeblahblahblah. Lord Thanos required his services, etc, something universe supreme leader, come with us now and no one dies, somethin somethin.

Ah, yes. The Chitari.

Aggressive aliens last seen trying to shred New York off the map.

Not the top race to run a fully peaceful mission. If by peaceful you meant “not outright shooting anyone yet”.

Well, they hadn’t been HYDRA. They weren’t even human. And Bucky’s brainwashing had been—here he faintly smiled—very, very undone by T’Challa’s excellent scientists. But he hadn’t really wanted to go with them all the same. Seventy years of enforced on again, off again brainwashed service to a Nazi murder cult made for a somewhat gun-shy Brooklyn kid, thanks very much for asking.

T’Challa, of course, had vehemently protested the demands of this “Thanos” and the thinly-veiled drafting of his friend. The Wakandan king had instantly called for a immediate meeting of his leaders to respond to this threat to his nation and to his respected friend and ally.

Bucky had sympathetically nodded. Said it sounded good to him.

And the second T’Challa’s back had been turned, Bucky’d slugged him hard on the back of the head, jumped over him, and, hands up, had boarded the Chitari warship. He’d been slugged on the back of the head too, as soon as he’d gone in, (it sounded like T’Challa had seen that, given the very panther-y roar he’d heard right before Bucky’d blacked out) so he figured T’Challa probably wouldn’t be trying to pay him back for his jerk move. Assuming they ever saw each other again.

Since poetic justice had already been served.

Bucky sighed, rubbing at his metal shoulder. He’d appreciated his friend’s willingness to defend him. But he wasn’t gonna have a bunch of innocent people die if he could help it. Especially not those who were only in the line of fire because he’d been there. Not if a quick surrender got the Chitari warship the hell away from Wakandan—hell, Earth—airspace.

Which was how the former Winter Soldier, HYDRA’s crack assassin, had wound up in a prison cell somewhere in space, a prisoner of the something something something blahblahblah Lord Thanos whatsit. Without an awful lot of fuss.

It’d been sort of boring, actually.

So far everything had been quiet. Like a really long airplane flight. Except he’d been mostly out cold for it and was a captive of aliens. Things were, per usual, wildly and utterly out of his understanding or control.

Eh.

Whatever.

He’d deal. And he’d have something different to tell Steve over a beer, once he saw him again. Assuming there was a way back to Earth. From the middle of space.

Maybe that Thor guy could portal him back to NY. That’d be nice.

Right now though, Bucky was focused on trying to figure out where the hell he was. So far he’d seen large spaceships floating around the middle of a supernova, but he’d only gotten a brief and groggy look out the ship’s window before he’d been hurled into the cell he was stuck in right now.

Minutes ticked by.

Boooooooooooored.

Bucky thought about his situation for a second and shrugged.

Well. At least he hadn’t been recaptured by HYDRA.

Oh. That thought wasn’t boring.

He felt his heart start to race, old phantom pains race up and down his metal arm, old awful thoughts start gnawing away at his mind. He gritted his teeth.

Don’t do it Barnes. Thinking about HYDRA was an old and frankly awful rabbit trail of thought to follow. So, right now, he decided to cast his mind back and focus on the faces of the people he had saved.

Because that was his coping mechanism. For each life he’d taken during his missions as the Winter Soldier, he’d forced himself to save at least one.

Which was one of the reasons they’d kept icing him, actually. Turns out that an expert assassin can also be an expert ass-kicker when he wanted, and he’d kept his programmers on their toes and sweating with his constantly twisted interpretation of their commands. He wasn’t a ornery half-Irish New Yawker for nothing, goddammit.

A simple “Clear the area” had once been understood as an order to detour by a burning building and evacuate all six stories. On another mission, he’d planted the bomb HYDRA had ordered him to in the appropriate desk drawer, evacuated their agents from the targeted building per the orders….and then gone back in and evacuated the rest of the bewildered workers as well. They’d said “Evacuate the building”. They just hadn’t wanted everyone evacuated. Whoops.

Bucky winced and rubbed his jaw a little at that, feeling the scars from old electrical burns hidden underneath his—what Tony jokingly called—his “stylish stubble”.

Yeaaaah, HYDRA had not liked that move at all. They’d threatened to make life a whole lot worse—heheheh, REALLY?—for him if he tried anything like that again. He’d stared straight ahead after their routine shock therapy. Said he understood.

And then on the next mission, a nearby admonition (not to him) to “Make a hole” had been ‘accidentally’ misunderstood by the Winter Soldier to mean that he should, quite literally, make a hole in his HYDRA commanding officer. Who was currently ordering the massacre of a small but singularly tenacious bunch of villagers. Bucky’s abrupt following of what he’d called his orders and the ensuing chaos had allowed many of the villagers to escape safely back into their mountains. Heheheh.

Priceless.

Bucky grimly flexed his metal fingers at that memory.

It’d taken forever to clean them off. Turns out punching someone through the chest is not as easy, or clean, as it sounds.

HYDRA been much more careful with their orders—and the length of his shock treatments—after that.

Nevertheless, Bucky smiled to himself. It was not a nice smile.

When people tried pulling his strings, they soon found out they got more than they bargained for.

And whoever this Thanos guy was, Bucky Barnes was not going to just cave in and follow orders easily.

He’d had enough of that.

The figure across the hallway stirred slightly. Bucky stood up from his cot again. Went up to the bars.

“Hey.” he said again. He was sort of worried now. The figure moaned. Still didn’t get up. Bucky’s face furrowed in frustration.

Then the sound of marching footsteps echoed down the corridor.


	12. Cellblock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a big universe.

Bucky glared at the guards as they left his cell, only lowering their weapons once they were safely out and his cell was triple locked again.

Well, their cell. He had a new roommate. As soon as the guards had backed away, he’d knelt down by the figure they’d chucked in. More gently than the metal arm was made for, he rolled his new cellmate over and stared down at a surprisingly familiar, albeit slack and worrisomely pale, face.

“Clint?”

The other man didn’t respond. Didn’t move. More importantly, didn’t say anything. Bucky frowned at that. Usually you couldn’t get the kid to shut up. He tried his code name.

“Hawkeye?”

Still nothing. Bucky frowned as he checked his occasional ally for signs of injury. There were…many. The boy was breathing, which was good, but his breaths were labored and wheezing, which was not so good. Bucky was no doctor, but he knew enough to know that much.

Add in a heavily bleeding wound over one eye, the defensive wounds on his hands, a few really nasty electrical burns on his face that matched up with good old fashioned torture—oooh, shit, probably from HYDRA Winter Soldier tech or something a lot like it—and the fact that he still wasn’t waking up or responding to his name, and Bucky sensed a good old clustercrap in the making. Kid looked to be in shock. Concussed, maybe, or drugged. Or both. Hard to say.

Once, just once, it’d be nice if his skill set and the actual human problem facing him matched the hell up.

Bucky shook his head, ground his teeth. Okay. Focus. One of Steve’s guys. Here. Tortured. Electrocuted. Maybe mind wiped. Don’t think too hard about that part.

Breathe deeply. Now is not an opportune moment for a furious swearing streak or a freaky as hell flashback.

Again. Kid’s hurt. Not responding. Argh, dammit. This is space. And aliens too. Maybe it’s that mind control Loki and the Chitari pulled on the kid last time. During New York. The time Steve talked about.

Is Steve captured too? Could be. Gotta get more information. First try and patch this kid up. Not that there’s much here to use.

The Chitari had just dumped their newest prisoner on the ground and left him there, like so much trash. Bucky resisted the urge to clench his metal fist until sparks ground out. For one thing, it wouldn’t do any good. For another, it was currently checking for Clint’s pulse. Bucky chanced a look around. Didn’t see any guards nearby. Decided Clint’s current situation warranted the risk. Punched in a hidden code on his metal wrist with his flesh hand.

Tony Stark’s upgrades weren’t half bad. In fact, they were pretty good. Although Bucky had had to talk Tony down from installing a slot for airplane bar size liquor bottles above his elbow. Slightly amused, Bucky instead had opted for a mini first aid kit.

“For what? A single Band-Aid? Or a mebbe a pair of Tums?”

Bucky’d just stared at Howard Stark’s genius son. “I was thinking more like morphine, adrenaline, and antiseptic, but if you really think fun size whiskey bottles are going to be more useful…”

In the end, Tony had capitulated. If only, he said, because morphine could also show you a good time.

Bucky deliberated about giving Clint a shot of morphine. Probably a bad idea. Kid looked sorta…out of it. Could be he already had something else in his system. Then his fingers found the needle marks in Clint’s neck. Couldn’t be sure what they’d given him. Painkiller would have to wait, then. Didn’t want him overdosing or maybe even having conflicting doses here, literal lightyears away from Earth and actual doctors.

Sorry kid.

But Bucky could do something about that long cut by his eye. And the cuts and burns on his hands.

He could do something.

As he worked, he remembered he should try talking to the kid. Maybe hearing a normal human voice would help snap him out of whatever trance he was in.

“Clint, Hawkeye. Kid. It’s me. Uh, Barnes. Bucky Barnes. I’m Steve’s pal. You and the rest of the Avengers helped find me, get me away from HYDRA, take me to Wakanda. I’m here now, and I’m gonna help you, okay? Just hold on—“

Yelling from across the hallway arrested his attention. Somebody was screaming infuriated epithets, and the sounds were rapidly coming in this direction.

“—KRUTAKIN COWARDS—“

Bucky felt his forehead crease in puzzlement. The guards marched by, stopping in front of the cell on the other side of the hallway that had the still figure still curled inside. They shoved in another person—

No. No. No.

A raccoon?—

—a talking _raccoon_ —

A talking, swearing raccoon was on their cellblock. He’d bounced off the cell floor when they’d tossed him in, turned around, slammed against the bars and was now screaming curses at the retreating guards, fur raised, teeth bared, blood lust in its angry eyes.

The guards marched away.

Bucky stared across the hallway for a second. Then looked down at his metal arm, and glanced at his own cellmate who regularly used a weapon from the paleolithic era to fight off villains ranging from invading aliens to masters of evil. Bucky shrugged. What the hell. It was a big universe.

Across the hallway, the raccoon hadn’t stopped screaming.

“—WHERE!!! SHE!!! GORRAM!! IS!!!!” he finished, punctuating his words with punches at the bars.

“HEY YOU! METAL ARM!” he roared, pointing a small but pointed claw at Bucky. “THEY BRING A DAME IN YET?”

Bucky shook his head, once. “Not so far. What’s she look like?”

The raccoon swore tiredly, slammed a fisted paw against the bars. His ears drooped a little.

“Tall. Twenty-five, thirty cycles, give or take.” he said, voice raspy and strained. “Dark hair, red tips. Brown eyes. Real bossy. A big pain in the—”

A weak little voice sounded from behind him, from the shadows of the cell. “Roc…Roc…Rocket?”

The animal’s tail bristled like a toothbrush and he whirled round, eyes starting out of his head.

“GAMMY?” he roared, and then he bounded forward in a rush of fur and maniac energy. Bucky saw that the raccoon didn’t so much hug his cellmate as dart around her, peppering her with a barrage of questions and words that would have been incredibly annoying if not for the frantic concern pouring off of him and making his fur stand on end.

“GammyGammyGammyGammyGammyGammy, are ya hurt, are ya okay, what happened, how’d ya get here, krutakin celestials, Gammy—

—Quill’s worried SICK about ya and so is Drax and Groot and Nova Prime and that big fat officer and even Yondu and the Ravagers said they was watchin the wavelengths for ya and we couldn’t find no trace of ya, we thought you’d run off and had enough of Quill’s crap, and Quill says he’s really really sorry for being 70% of a dick, he won’t do it no more—

—we ain’t slept for three days straight, Gammy, and Quill hasn’t slept for FIVE days ever since you had that fight and Drax’s sharpened all his knives, like, fifteen thousand times, and I’ve made like twenty bombs, the kind can blow up moons, and Groot’s not dancin, cuz he misses you, Gammy, and we figured we’d split up to look for ya in Knowhere and ask ya to come back or find if anyone hurt ya or took ya, and then we’d kill em, and then we could all go back to the Milano, and next thing I know I’m wakin up in gorram Thanos’ gorram ship….”

He stopped short. Took a closer look at her. When he next spoke, his voice was one of abject horror. “Gammy,” he choked out, sounding much more horrified than could bode well, “wha happened?”

The figure hiding in the dark corner sniffled. She’d draped herself in the blanket from one of the thin cots and curled up tight in a ball, knees curled tight to her chest. Which, Bucky figured, was how she’d escaped her cellmate’s initial notice. He was also her friend, if his relieved reaction was anything to go by.

“I, I, I don’t know.” she said, her voice catching. Bucky squinted. Come to think of it, her voice was pretty…small sounding. For a grown woman.

The raccoon, Rocket, inched forward toward her, his eyes bright with something that was not only anger. He tentatively put one paw on her knee and reached up for the blanket hooding her face with the other. He stopped short before he reached it, tail ramrod straight. As if he’d realized something he did not like at all.

“Lemme see, Gammy.” he said. But it was not, in any way, an order.

A sniffle from inside the blanket. “O—okay.”

Very, very gently, Rocket drew back the blanket. Started back. And for the first time truly, utterly, snarled. An animalistic growl erupted out of his chest, he bared his teeth so that his canines caught the light from the harsh florescent lights, and he looked like he would have willingly ripped the throats out of any Chitauri within a thousand miles.

Bucky stared again. It was a little girl.

No more than ten years old.

Dark hair, red tips.

Tired brown eyes.

Green skin. Cybernetic wiring sparking out underneath one of the small cheekbones. Bucky realized his own mechanical arm was clenching into a fist. Good thing he’d put Clint’s head down first.

What the—

But Rocket had said his friend was almost thirty—what had—

“Oh, Rocket!” the little girl said, and her lower lip trembled. She obviously fought against the urge to cry for a moment, valiantly, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She was still ensconced in the thin old blanket, the worn material wrapped around the shoulders of a dress too big for her, and she was soon shaking so badly that Bucky thought it was a wonder she didn’t shake apart. Rocket freaked out at this. His fur bristled so that he looked like he’d been caught in a monsoon, and then he started jumping around, checking her for damage, tucking the blanket in more securely, and generally just scurrying around the crying child so frantically she looked like she was wearing a coat of raccoon tails.

“No, no, no, whoa, whoa whoa, Gammy, don’ cry, we’ll fix this, I, uh, I promise, I, uh, uh, uh—“

She’d curled back into a ball, now, her back against the wall, and was rocking back and forth a little, crying silently, now. She shook her head, tried to get up. Rocket stopped jumping around for a moment, attempted to keep her sitting. She grabbed him and clung onto him tight—as if he’d been a stuffed animal keeping her safe from childhood onwards—and buried her face into the top of his head, still crying.

Wow. That was exactly the way a small kid would hug a stuffed animal.

Rocket gurgled, then managed to get one paw free and patted her back soothingly. “Uh, uh, uh…..there, there.” he said awkwardly, fighting for air. “Notta worry, Gammy. Heheh, you thought Quill was pissed when Ronan tried using the Power Stone on Xandar? Hohoho, Gammy, huh, you ain’t seen nothin yet, he’s gonna wipe Thanos off the face of the galaxy when I call him and tell him you’re here—“

His head shot up and he managed to turn around, shooting his gaze around as if searching for something…and finally staring straight at Bucky, analyzing him closely.  
Bucky blinked. What’d he done?

“You.” the raccoon said, and small as he was, the sheer concentrated focus in his voice made him sound like a lion instead of a much smaller beast, “I’m gunna need your arm.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“That’s fine, pal, but how am I gonna get it to you?”

The raccoon smiled. It showed most of his teeth. “Call me Rocket. And gimme a second.”


	13. Phone A Friend

  
“Reach out, Gammy. You, arm dude, stretch further!”

“Yep.” Bucky strained his fingers out towards the other side of the hall. The little girl, per her pet? her friend’s? whatever—per Rocket’s instructions—had also stretched out her hand between the bars, reaching for his own. Bucky gritted his teeth. Tried to make his own arm stretch out further. Their fingertips were barely touching. There. Got it. The first knuckles of their index fingers just managed to hook around the other’s. Barely.

“Thas good, thas good, thas good.” Rocket said, fiddling with some wires he’d pulled out from somewhere on his person. “Jus make sure you’re connected, and I’ll slide this here out to Arm Guy’s fingers here, use that awesome metal arm as a kind of conductor, and get a message to Quill, and then…”. The creature threw back his head and laughed. It was a dark laugh, and somewhat disconcerting, since it came from something so small and apparently vulnerable. “Aw, man, when they get here, we oughtta record clips and sell views to ‘em on StarTube. Quill is gonna obliterate this ahole, believe you me. If Drax doesn’t dissect him first!”

Gamorra didn’t seem very reassured. She was real quiet and wasn’t looking around much. Bucky tried smiling encouragingly over at her. It was sort of hard with his face smushed between the bars. Oh well. At least he was trying.

Rocket swore at his cords. Then worked on them for about a minute in silence.

“Gammy, how'd you end up little again?” he said suddenly.

“ ‘I dunno.” she said in a tired, cracking little voice. “I don’ know what happened, but Th-thanos…when they brought me to him, he just laughed. Then everything hurt, and then he said he’d used the time—time stone on me. Then they threw me in here. Haven’t come back since.”

“Time stone, what the krutak does that mean?” Rocket snarled at the cords. The girl shook her head. “I think…I think it’s like the power stone. But with time. He kept my memories the same, but now I’m…like I was when he first. Um. When he invaded my planet. That first time.”

Bucky did not like where this was going.

“He—he said he was gunna train me again.” she said miserably. “He laughed. Said that—that—that I was gunna be his assassin again.”

Oh. Bucky definately did not like this. Not at all.

“The krutakin hell you are, Gammy.” Rocket said reassuringly. “I’m notgunna let him touch you. Tha’s for sure. And none of the other Guardians will either, you can bet your last credit on that.”

“I’d have some objections to that happening too. And I’m really good at causing trouble.” Bucky supplied. Gammorra looked at him, surprised. Bucky winked at her reassuringly. She smiled a little, almost involuntarily.

Rocket grunted in approval. “There, antennae’s done. Now all I gotta do is slide it out along your arm, Gammy, thas’ right, like that, until it hits that dude’s fingers—yep, yep, yep, perfect—annnnnnnnd we’reeee broadcasting!”

Bucky watched as the thin little wires tapped his fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. Then red lights flickered on at the ends.

“Quill, Quill, Quill, hey, Quill!” Rocket said in a loud whisper, perched on Gammora’s shoulder and staring intently at the tiny, waving stalks. “It’s me, Rocket, I found Gamorra, she’s on Thanos’ ship! Track my signal! Track this call! COME GET US!!”

A thin, tinny voice emanated from one of the stalks.

“Waaaaaaaat?!! Is she okay?!! Gamorra, you there? Say something! Holy shit, Drax, start tracin the call!!”

Another voice from a different stalk, deeper, growling. “Of course, friend Quill. But there is nothing santimonious about—“

“Shaddup Drax, Quill, I gotta tell ya somethin, Gammy’s fine but she’s little again. Like, ten cycles little. Looks like Thanos got ahold of the time stone, and is tryin to redo her brain washing thingy. So, um. Yeah. Hurry up and geddhere.”

Flabbergasted silence from the other end of the line. Then a tiny voice.

“I…am…Groot?”

“Sure we can change her back.” Rocket lied, and because Bucky was the only one facing him, he could see the uncertainty along with the utter panic in the animal’s eyes. “Just hurry up before the great and mighty jerkface gets bored with organizin some big invasion and decides to check up on his prisoners again. So chop chop!”

He glanced over at Bucky, then seemed to remember somethin.

“And we got some friends here.” He squinted at Clint, who was still dead to the world. “Uh, we got that Metal Arm guy who’s friends with that Sargent United States dude, and…uh, another guy. Some sorta Defender?”

The first antennae’s voice sounded confused. “Sargent United…you mean Captain America?!!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, but not him, his buddy, the one all over the wanted cortexes a few years back who ended up savin Captain Stars and Stripes from that carrier wreck, and some other dude. An Avenger, thazzit.”

The voice from the first antennae sounded ecstatic, just like a little kid.

“No way! You’re with Iron Man!”

“Nah.”

“Hulk?”

“Nope.”

“Thor!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Black Widow?”

“IS BLACK WIDOW A GUY?!” Rocket yelled.

“Bucky Barnes and Hawkeye.” Bucky supplied helpfully.

“Hawkguy!” Rocket told his comms.

“Huh.” The first stalk said, sounding thoughtful. “Actually, you know what, we just picked up a signal from Captain America, as a matter of fact—did you know their AvenJet can travel through SPACE?—cuz apparently it can—“

Another voice trickled in through a third stalk, this one patchy.

“—ucky?! Is that you? What the—where are you?!”

Steve?! Steve!! Hey, maybe he wouldn’t have to wait another few decades to see his old friend again.

“Present and accounted for.” Bucky said, striving to keep his tone even. “Got abducted by aliens this morning. At least I think it was this morning. And Clint’s here too. Think he needs medical help, if you have any. As to where we are…well, um. We’re in a spaceship. And that is the extent of my knowledge. And do you, by any chance, have any idea what the hell is goin on, cuz we sure as hell don’t.”

He heard Steve start to say something, but the sound of marching feet made them all turn round.

Oh. Stupendous.

Sounded like the guards were coming back. Bucky and Gamorra broke contact immediately, snatching their hands away as if lighting had struck them both. She snatched Rocket up and darted to the far wall of their cell with him. Turned around, slid down the far wall. Wrapped herself up in the blanket again, staring wide eyed out at the passageway. Rocket’s eyes peeped out from underneath her chin. She looked scared. And he looked angry.

Bucky knelt back down by Clint. Put on his best blank stare and made sure to take his time glancing up at the guards when they did pass by their cell.

“You guys got any medical attention.” he asked blandly, making sure he put no real concern in his voice whatsoever. “Cuz I dunno how well this guy’s gonna hold up without it.”

The guard, a Chitari, shrugged. At least that’s what Barney guessed he’d done. His chitonous plating on one shoulder had shifted, at least.

“That’s not their concern. Tell me and the Midgardian what you need.” The guards moved aside. Huh. They’d brought that green god of mischief Loki. Flanking him like he’s some big important guest. Great.

And some other shmuck was with him. Looked a lot like Clint. But was older, about five inches taller, and had a major guilt complex, going from the expression in his somewhat sleep-deprived and red-rimmed, shifting eyes. Bucky frowned in thought. Threw his mind back to a few databanks and half remembered conversations.

“Barney Barnes. HYDRA.” he said finally. The other man started, shot him a guilty look. Eyes widened as he realized who Bucky was. “More like, uh, a contractor.” he muttered.

“So, HYDRA.” Bucky said flatly. His metal fist cracked a little. “Well. I think I just figured out how your brother from SHIELD ended up in here in the next best thing to a coma.”

The man couldn’t look him in the eyes. Fiddled with an advanced looking tablet instead.

“Uh, you said he needed medical attention.”

Bucky nodded once, eyes still flat.

“Yeah. That some kinda scanner?”

Barney threw a half-hopeful, half scared look down at him. “Yep. Thought we could….” Shot a glance over at Loki, seemed to readjust his words. “Um. We’re supposed to make sure he’s ready to go another round with Thanos.”

On the other side of the hallway, Gamorra stirred. “Go another round…?” she said, voice unsteady. Rocket snarled from inside the blanket. Maybe Gamorra had squeezed him like a squeak toy. Maybe he was just pissed off against torture in general. It was hard to tell.

“I could be wrong.” Bucky deadpanned. “But I sincerely doubt he is ready for anything like that. He’s lucky to still have that eye. And I don’t even have a scanner.”

Barney’s face went a shade paler and he looked—was that hopefully?—over at Loki. Who sighed dramatically. And snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened.

Bucky looked around, down at Clint’s still face, back up at Loki. Raised an eyebrow. Barney’d gone paler. If that were possible.

Loki frowned. Snapped them again.

“That’s…odd.” he said smoothly. “He’s supposed to wake up.”

“Well, he’s not.” Barney said unhelpfully. His hands were clenched hard around the tablet’s rim, the dirty knuckles white with pressure and nerves. He blinked rapidly.

“So what’s the plan now?” He demanded through clenched teeth. “So much for—“

A high pitched wailing siren interrupted him. Simultaneously, a loud, deep, insistent blaring sounded. Their Chitari guards jumped into action, reptilian heads swinging round, trying frantically to process what was happening. Loki swung his palm from side to side disinterestedly. Blew them into little bits with blasts of icicles that erupted from his palms.

Well. He hadn’t blasted the captives. So he was probably on their side.

Loki looked over at Bucky. He was grinning, widely. His eyes glinting white. Well that was…different.

“Well, well, well. It looks like two different attacks are going on. In different parts of the ship.”

Spiraling electrical shrieks added to the chaos.

“Make that three!” Barney corrected, shouting. He’d dropped the tablet and was wincing in pain and pressing his hands over his ears, much like Bucky, Gamorra, and Rocket were. Clint still hadn’t moved.

Loki shrugged. Pointed a finger at the lock on Bucky and Clint’s cell.

“Look out.” he said. Time seemed to slow down. Barnes started to say something, eyes wide. Bucky saw Gamorra clutch Rocket tightly to her, eyes huge with trepidation. Rocket choked slightly, his own eyes bugging out. Bucky had just enough time to grab Clint off the floor and half turn, making himself a human shield—and making sure his metal arm was the one closest to the crazy, trigger happy Asgardian god aiming apparently crazy hard to control powers at their door—

A blast of light. A scream of sound.

The world dissolved into silence and light.


	14. Back In Action

_—linton Francis Barton, talk to me!_

Clint cracked open an eye. Thought he did, anyway.

Nothing. Darkness.

For a horrible, awful instant, he thought Thanos’ last backhand had taken his eyes with it. He couldn’t remember anything after that had happened, at all events. The guy’s gauntlet had been pretty freaking heavy. Loaded with heavy stones, too. Go figure.

He choked, tried to say something. Nothing would come. Then a faint, coralescing ribbon of light started off in a far corner of what he thought was his vision. He could have cried with relief. So he wasn’t blind. Not yet, anyway. Where was he?

_I don’t know, Clint._

A voice. Not his. Aw, crap, now the light’s gone. Can’t see. Can’t see. Can’t see.

_Clint, don’t freak out._

How do you know if I’m freaking ou—

He struggled for understanding, for words. Who was talking—

_It’s me, Clint. It’s Tasha._

Tasha? Where!

_I’m here in Thanos’ ship with you._

Yeah, kay, great, but **where** are you, I need to see—uh, waitasec, how can I hear you, are we on comms or something, but Barney took mine back at the canyon, I can’t, I don’t—

_Clint, stop freaking out—_

I’m not freakin out, I’m asking all the right questions, like, where are you, actually, no, wait a second, it’s not safe here, getoutgetoutgetoutGETOUT—

_Clint, listen—_

—you gotta get out before Thanos knows you’re here—this guy’s crazy, Tasha, he literally courts Death, as in, like, he has this major crush on a goddess of Death from a whole ‘nuther universe, and he wants to offer up Earth as a sacrifice, he’s already killed his own system to show her he’s serious, it was like he was sending her flowers or something—tell Cap and Tony that, they can look it up and Thor can tell them its true—

_Clint, we know—_

—Tasha, he brainwashes little girls to be his own personal assassins, and he says he knows about you and wants ta add ya to his collection, and I couldn’t kill him, I tried, I promise, but I couldn’t…move, really, or think, even, and he’s real strong, Tasha, so, so, so, you gotta get outta here and RUN—

**_CLINT, STOP!!!!_ **

Even mentally her volume hurt.

Ow, okay.

_LET ME ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. I AM TALKING TO YOU THROUGH A MIND CONNECTION. I THINK YOU’RE CURRENTLY UNCONSCIOUS. IT TOOK FOREVER FOR YOU TO EVEN START ANSWERING ME. WHICH SCARED ME, YOU BIG JERK. AND WHAT I’M USING IS CALLED A MIND STONE. DON’T ASK._   
_BUT I AM COMING TO GET YOU. WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU._

But shouldn’t you stay back and protect—

_Thanos was coming to Earth regardless of where we met him. Star Lord says this system is relatively deserted and so is an excellent spot to, and I quote, kick his ass._

You’re hanging with a guy named Star Lord?

_That’s what he called himself_.

But, uh, Tasha, you shouldn’t…he said he’s gonna make me kill…uh. You shouldn’t come here. Where I am. Not here. Not here. Get him, first. Stop him. First.

_I. AM. GETTING. YOU. OUT._

But—

_Clint—_

Wow, her voice was gentle.

_Do you have any idea how badly you’re hurt?_

Um, no.

_Liar._

No, I’m not lyin. I’m just, uh. I dunno. Not really.

_It isn’t good. I can feel it. I know the sedatives have worn off, but you’re practically in pieces inside. And you should know that I’m not leaving you alone like that. You didn’t do it to me in Budapest. Or Prague. Or Venice. I won’t do that to you. In…oh. Whatever solar system we’re in._

But you gotta take down Thanos first—

_We have, stupid. We got his gauntlet, anyway. Tony sorta snatched it off and flew away with it. I’m using the mind stone to communicate with you right now. We’ve taken Thanos’ control deck and we’re tracing your location as we speak. And you’re not the only prisoner he has. Our allies helped us blow up his fleet on the condition we get their friends out too. We’re just upholding our end of the bargain._

Clint felt a shudder of relief pass through him.

Oh, okay. That’s…that makes more sense. Seems more like something you’d do. Sorry, Tash. I can’t think right.

_It’s okay, Clint._

Loki got me. Again. I can’t…think right. Can’t think. Hurts to. Ow. Think, hurts to think.

_That bastard._

Yeah. He got me again. So you should…uh. Sorry. Can’t think. You should get the others. Maybe leave me, though. I don wanna…go all pyscho on you. Not again. I couldn’t stand it.

Then it was as if he heard her laugh a little, almost involuntarily. God, it was a nice laugh. He hadn’t heard it in awhile.

_Oh, Clint. You lovable, absolute idiot._

Heh. Coming from her, stupid and idiot didn’t sound so bad. But his mind wandered. He tried forcing it back into place.

Don’ wanna scare ya. Not again. Not like on the Helicarrier.

Her voice sounded surprised.

_Scare me?_

Yeah. Scare ya. Don’ want you to be scared of me. Well, more scared, of me. Since New York. I know you’re scared of me. M sorry. ‘M sorry you…can’t trust me. But I can’t…I can’t think right, Tasha. Can’t think right. S’ my fault. M’ weak. M’ stupid. ‘M…sorry.

Silence on the other end of the line. Sudden fear twisted his gut. Tasha, he tried. Tasha.

_Tony. Are you getting this?_

A different voice, definately Tony’s, saying, Yeah. I’m gettin it.

_Look at these readouts, Tony. Do you think that the mind stone—that this whole time, it’s been—_

Tony again, sounding angry, Yeaaaah, probably.

What? Clint weakly asked. What what what, whadda you talkin about? Tasha’s presence came back, cool and calm and professional. And utterly incredible.

_Your thoughts. Parts of them. They’re resonating with the same frequency of Thanos’ mind stone and Tony thinks that jerk’s been trying to manipulate you ever since New York….oh, never mind. You actually think I’m scared of you?_

Well, yeah.

_WHY?_

Uhhm. Cuz I tried to kill you that one time. Almost worked, too. I, let, I let myself get mind whammied—

_Oh, Clint…you didn’t…you can’t “let” yourself get—Clint, please, believe me, that wasn’t your faul—_

And, and, I didn’t stoppit, and almost got you killed, and I did get that doctor killed, and Coulson was killed, but he came back again and didn’t tell us, which makes sense, I get it, I do, and the Helicarrier almost crashed and Loki coulda taken over New York, and then the world, and I’m real sorry ‘bout that, I am—‘m real sorry…’m so sorry…

**_CLINT_** , and her voice wasn’t angry, the way he thought it would be, it was breaking with an entirely different emotion, _**STOP. TALKING.**_

He did. He was too tired now anyway. It hurt to think. It hurt. It…

_**CLINT!!!** _

…wha…

_**Clint—** _

—can’t respond, even though he tries, he can’t form even a passing thought—never had that problem before…

_**Clint?!!** _

—her voice is cracking, but Tasha doesn’t cry, not even on the inside, she just, doesn’t, not unless something super bad is happening—

**_Clint, please, stay with me!_ **

He’s tryin—but it hurts—and then it doesn’t, all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt…is that a good or a bad thing….

Something different. A feeling of a presence. Inside his mind. Suddenly feels like someone’s gently taken his face between her hands.

_**Clint, please don’t go.** _

He sure doesn’t want to. Not really. He’s just so…tired.

_**Clint, please. I need you around. Because…I…I really…like you.** _

Clint stops drifting away at that. He’s sorta surprised.

Like, like? Or like?

Her voice is soft. What the…it’s never soft.

_**Like.** _

And then he definitely feels her kiss him. Once, on the cheek. Very softly.

SAY. WHAT.

It’s like sparks blow up in his brain. All of a sudden, he remembers everything. Barney tellin him the plan in the spaceship. How Clint’s got the key to the back door, the one to taking down Thanos once and for all. How he’s had it this whole time. How Thanos can talk to him as much as he wants, order him around as much as he wants, but the big jackass can’t possibly make him try to kill Tasha, or anyone else, ever flarging again. And Loki’s mind control is…gone now too. Just, gone. Like a thin sheen of frost snapping out of existence at sunrise.

What? How’d that—oh.

Tasha’d broken Loki’s mind control the first time.

She’d broken it now.

Forever, it felt like.

And Loki hadn’t actually wiped Clint’s mind in that shuttle. He’d just frozen it. Still was a dick move, and he’d be taking it out of Loki’s hide at some point, but—but he wasn’t—he could think now—

—and Tasha wasn’t scared of—

—Tasha actually—

—she actually—

—WOW—

—for the first time in a long time, he feels _whole_.

_Clint?_

Tasha’s voice is more than slightly worried. _Tony’s yelling something and the readouts all along the main control deck just sort of—exploded—are you oka—_

WHOOOOHOOOOHOOOOO!!! THE HELL WITH THIS! I’M GONNA LIVE!!

Tasha’s delighted laugh at his ecstatic response was suddenly cut off. Just like that, her presence is gone.

Tasha? Tasha? Tasha! Tony! What’s going on—

Another voice, different.

Ah. Interesting.

Oh. Oh God.

Tasha’s voice, sudden, only there for a second—

**_—int, run—_ **

Clint never knew exactly what happened next. One second, he was mind melding with Tasha. The next, somebody very much not Tasha had taken her place. And he knew, with screaming certainty, that if he didn’t wake up or snap out of it or whatever, he’d never see Tasha again.

So he woke up.


	15. Cue the Calvary

***

Clint's eyes—his real eyes—shoot open. Take in everything at a glance. Smoke, clearing. Rubble, falling. A hole, blasted through the bars of a prison cell. His prison cell.

He’s on the floor. Which is to be expected. Bucky Barnes is there, wincing and holding up his metal arm to shield them both against the falling rubble. That guy is slightly less expected, since the last Clint knew he’d been getting therapy in Wakanda, but it’s been a fairly strange day, so Clint just takes it in stride. A little wide-eyed green alien girl and a blue-streak swearing raccoon are in the cell across the hall, behind his flabbergasted brother and their currently not-all-there-but-still-more-ally-than-enemy Asgardian jerkwad with the reindeer games helmet.

Clint reaches out. Snatches a broken piece of iron prison bar from where it rolled, clanging, onto the ground. Lifts an arm. Throws the shard of metal like a knife. The guard appearing from the smoke goes down, gun shooting off a—now useless—plasma blast into the ceiling. Instead of through the back of Barney’s head.

Three separate alarms keep screaming. How many people are ATTACKING this fleet?

Everybody stares at him for a second.

It’s awkward.

Clint shakes his head once, twice. Three times.

“Control deck.” he rasps. “Now, now now now. Right now. They’re there. They’re all there. Thanos, he got the gauntlet again. We gotta GO.”

Bucky reaches down, gives Clint a hand. Helps him up. They go through the hole in the bars.

The little girl’s there, outside her cell. Holding her raccoon like a teddy bear. Reluctantly puts him down.

And his brother’s there. Looking at him—well, kinda like he’s super glad to see him. Which is strange. Clint files that away for later. Oh, hey, and Thor’s crazy ice prince brother is right by him. Oh, yeah. Loki’d brought them here. Some sort of half-cooked, crazy insane plot to take down Thanos.

Oh, whatever. Typical Avenger Tuesday, then.

He bends down. Grabs a blaster. Bucky’s already grabbed two. Rocket huffs indignantly and, grumbling, keeps a miserly hold on the only rocket launcher he was able to grab off one of the corpses. The little girl stoops, picks up two pieces of sharp metal. Holds them like knives she knows how to use.

Clint looks over at Loki. Resists the urge to shoot him in the face.

“Where’s the control room on this ship?” he growls. Loki grins again. “I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

So.

You think you have a plan. The plan is that you surprise Thanos by ignoring the Mind Stone and then stab and shoot him repeatedly before he kills any of your friends.

You and all your new, very strange friends—and not friends, if you count Barney and Loki—storm the control deck, kicking much ass along the way. But when you get there—

—right after you lead the charge into the room yelling “COME ON GUYS, LEZ TAKE OUT THAT SON OF A—”

—you see that Thanos, the gigantic, purple Titan dude with a literal Death-wish—has managed to incapacitate everyone, and by everyone you do indeed mean all of your super-powered legendary friends, super powered acquaintances, and generally everyone who isn’t a dead minion. He’s just holding up his gauntleted hand and keeping them all frozen, dangling a few feet off the ground. Different colored rays of light are shooting out from the stones on his glove o’ death and are covering each person’s head like some sort of really painful helmet.

They’re all stuck. Scared. And painfully immobile.

So he’s not using just the Mind Stone.

He’s using _all_ the Stones.

You’re _not_ immune to _all_ of the Stones.

This is really going to throw your plan for a loop.

And then he looks over at your little group.

And grins.

“Welcome.”

Ray of light, so fast you almost can’t see it.

Annnnnnnnnd now he’s got all of you too.

What idiot thought up this plan?

Oh, yeah.

Some genius by the name of Clint Barton.

* * *  
“Clint,” Barney coughed, choking out what little words he could through the tightening pain enveloping every cell in his body, “Clint, what’do we—what’do we do—“

“Stop talking.” Thanos suggested, and Barney lost track of what was happening for a few seconds. Pain, there was pain, he knew that, but all the details sort of blended together. When his eyes worked again, he dimly saw somebody being unceremoniously dropped to the ground right in front of Thanos’ feet.

Aw, no. Not Clint.

“What in the universe makes an ant like you think you could fight me? Here, in my realm. In my own ship? Not even an hour after my troops dragged your scarcely breathing body away?”

His brother, coughing. Forcing his way to his hands and knees.

“Well, not an—awful lot, I…I guess. I mean, you curb-stomped the Avengers without really even tryin. And those guys—“ he waved a bloody hand over at a group of very angry and very vicious looking people Barney had never seen before—“—too.”

“ _—lint!_ ” Widow, trying to get free. Thanos glares over at her. The light around her head focuses a little.

It looks like it hurts. Thanos’ attention goes back to Clint.

“That’s not an answer, boy.”

Clint’s eyes shift from Widow back to Thanos. Kid bro’s looking pissed again. But hides it. Smiles up at Thanos.

The smile shows all of his teeth.

“Well, **_Sunspot_**.”

Oh, God. This is how it always went down. That was the look, the mulishly stubborn, unbelievably provoking sneer Clint always gave right before he’d said something super stupid to draw away their dad’s attention from their mom—or from his brother—or from the dog—

— _why_ was Clint born without a sense of self preservation, why oh why oh _why_ —

“…I guess the answer is…that, I really don’t like…bullies. Plus I think you’re a…jackass.”

“How noble. But allow me to remind you that I prefer to be addressed as Lord Thanos.”

“Oh, okay. Well, then. You’re a _jackass, Lord Thanos_.” Barney’s brother pauses, spits something onto Thanos’ boot. He looks up again. Grinning. “Howzat?”

He always was good at annoying the hell out of people.

Or deliberately provoking them, a tiny, hopeful voice suggested.

Then Thanos is moving and Barney can’t think straight anymore.

Clint.

Clint.

Clint’s in danger.

A blast of electricity, right to Clint’s chest. His brother is knocked backwards a few feet, tumbles down the steps that led up to the dias. He lands hard on his back in the rubble. Lies on the ground, coughing. Thanos walks down the stairs, heavy boots ringing on the ship’s metal floor. Behind him—behind all of the struggling, would-be Earth saving heroes and anti-heroes—the control room’s windows look out on deep space. Stars and galaxies spin by in the cold blackness, throwing multifaceted light into the room. Glimmers of color are reflected off control panels that flash strange symbols, sparks leaking out and flashing from where they’ve been damaged.

It’s a strange place to die.

Barney doesn’t want to die.

And he doesn’t want Clint to die. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. _He doesn’t._ He swears, fights to get free. Agony stabs through his head. Can’t think. Can’t think. Oh, god, this is what that feels like. Can’t think. Can’t think. Clint’s gonna die. Clint’s gonna—

Thanos looms over his little brother. A dark figure against the light.

“Just what did you think you were going to do?”

“Well…I guess I could throw up on you again.” his brother offers weakly. “But I did that already this morning. So.”

Thanos growls, bends down. Grabs Clint by the neck. Lifts him up, high with one hand. Squeezes. Clint’s bloody face goes blue. He coughs for air, can’t get any, clutches ineffectively at the huge gauntleted hand crushing his windpipe.

Barney feels sick. Clint’s immunity to Thanos’ mind control is not going to help him breathe. Shit, Barney, think of somethin—help him for once in your goddamn life—don’t die Clint don’t die Clint don’t die Clint—

“You should show respect, _boy_.” Thanos snarls. “I control the gems in the Infinity Gauntlet. I control forces beyond your comprehension. I spearheaded the first invasion of your world, controlled your mind, your thoughts, your actions, and when you thought you’d escaped that, I crept into your very dreams, and you could do _nothing_.”

“Huh. Tha duz ezplain the nighmtares.” Clint slurs. Thanos squeezes harder. Clint’s voice chokes completely off. Barney bites his lip so hard blood flows.

“I can control time. As my daughter could tell you.” Thanos continues. He stops, looks Clint up and down, considering. He smiles. It is not a very nice smile.

“Come to think of it, you’ve had your fair share of pain too, I think.” His eyes glow green and suddenly Clint stiffens, makes an awful sound, far back in his throat, eyes squeezing shut, face twisting in agony, all defiance and smart assery entirely gone.

Barney feels his stomach twist.

“It is clearly not enough to break your mind.” Thanos continues. “Perhaps reminding you that you cannot escape your past will help you—and all your comrades—retain the lesson I’m trying to teach.”

Barney’s eyes go wide as something white and jagged stabs its way out of Clint’s left leg. Clint makes that awful sound again. Now the right leg goes. Knee’s bent. Wrong way.

Oh, shit, the fall. The fall _he’d_ caused. That night. That damn, stupid, horrible thing he could never undo. Even when he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to go back, stop himself from doing it, just as soon as Clint had fallen. Even before his little brother had smashed into the ground far below, and just lay there, so still, blood pooling out from under him, not moving…Barney’d wanted to help him. Take it back. Somehow fix it.

But you couldn’t take something like that back. You couldn’t help someone you’d just tried to kill. They’d never believe you were sorry. Even if you told them. Even if you tried to show them you were.

And it’s happenin, again. Clint’s hurtin. Again.

And it’s not Dad, this time.

Not this time.

This time, it’s on Barney’s head.

Yeah. It is.

Something snaps, quite audibly, inside Clint’s chest. One hand stops clutching at Thanos’ gauntlet, folds in on itself all of a sudden, oh, shit, oh, _shit_. That was the one Alan had stomped. Clint’s eyes are almost all shut, now, he’s all limp and just hanging, there, his breathing’s really bad, he looks like he’s dyin, hell, he probably was—How many ribs had he broken in the fall? Three? One of ‘em punctured a lung, maybe—Barney couldn’t remember—he’d stolen the medical file from Coulson when he’d been arrested and when they wouldn’t tell him how Clint was doin, but he couldn’t remember it all—no, no, no, no, nononononoo—

NO, no, NONONONO!!

 _ **“HEY, JACKASS!!”**_ Barney yells.

Hey. He can yell. He can—he can _yell_?

But Thanos told him—

—told him not to _talk_.

He hadn’t said anything about _yelling_.

Barney barrels on through the mind control—maybe it’s a latent Barton superpower— and he’s vaguely surprised at himself, he really is, the last time he stood up for Clint was when he was like, maybe nine, to their dad, tried stoppin him from beating Clint up for being a smartass, and he’d gotten his own ass handed to him for it, but—

—but he couldn’t just sit there—and let this happen—

—again—

—so he yells at the evil overlord the same words he’d yelled at their dad, all those years and multiple star systems ago—

“YOU, YOU THINK YOU’RE SO BIG? YOU THINK, YOU THINK YOU’RE SOMETHIN CUZ YOU CAN CRUSH OTHER PEOPLE? YOU’RE NOT! YOU’RE NOT! YOU’RE—NOT!!”

Everyone is staring at him. Especially Clint. His little brother’s eyes crack open again, and he’s locked gazes with Barney. Clint’s eyes are gleaming. It’s like Clint’s seeing someone he knows really well. But for the first time.

Or maybe for the first time in a long time.

Thanos regards Barney for a second. Clint fumbles at the gauntlet with his one good hand.

“Interesting.” Thanos says thoughtfully. “I’ll dissect you next.”

He turns his eyes back to Clint. Barney swears despairingly.

“What was it you were going to do, now?” Thanos asks.

“—was gunna—throw up on you…” Clint chokes.

“Or…”

Light flashes in his hand. A smirk—and not just any smirk, this one is completely, utterly, the totally self-satisfied, smug, smartass _Clint’s_ smirk—the smirk that’s faster than lightning and three times as bright—Clint’s smirk lights up his bloody face. Barney hasn’t seen his brother look like that in years. Since they’d been in the circus together.

He could laugh if he wasn’t dying. Clint grins and finishes his sentence.

“—could do—this.”

Clint’s fingers twitch. Something bright and sharp flashes between them.

Thanos screams.

Barney feels himself falling. Not back into the mind control, but actually falling. Onto the ground. Hard. Everyone else bounces off various surfaces too, with assorted shrieks and yells. It sounds like it hurts. Barney knows he does. He feels like his body’s in a thousand pieces. And that he’s going to fall apart. Or throw up. He rolls over. He does. Throw up. He’s not alone. A blue-skinned alien with some sort of headfin and wearing a red trench coat is also emptying his stomach’s contents all over Thanos’ control room a few feet away from him. Ah, community stomach purging. What a bonding experience.

Barney retches again, panic banging on the doors of his mind, shattering his concentration.

Gotta get up. Gotta help Clint.

Can’t move. Body isn’t responding right. He can look, though. He does. Although it feels like his neck is breaking as he twists his neck to see.

Thanos is cradling his gauntleted hand in his other one, bent over it, snarling. A shard of glass is sticking through it. Straight through it. The light from the gauntlet has dimmed, now. Died. He’d thrown Clint from him when he’d stabbed him, down and across the room with enough force to crack the control panel Clint slammed against. Clint whacked into the screen, hard, slid down it. Barely caught himself on a nearby control panel with his one good hand and now painfully leans back. Fumbles for a broken piece of piping with his good hand. Holds it out like a sword.

“Not so guh—good—without your—guh—gauntlet—huh—big guy?”

Thanos snarls, a truly terrifying sound rumbling up from deep inside his chest.

“Your friends cannot help you.”

“Eh, not yet. But they’re going to. Right guys?”

Assorted pitiful moans answer him. Clint grins back at Thanos. “That’s them for yes. So. While they’re all getting their space legs together…you up for another round?”

Thanos laughs, once, scornful. The sound hurts Barney’s eardrums.

“You think you can fight me, boy? How long do you think you will last?” Clint shifts his weight, considering. Shrugs. Winces a little. “Dunno. Haven’t, haven’t tried.”

“Your spirit is admirable. Your insolence…less so. But I have dealt with others like you. Broken them beyond recognition.”

Clint widened his eyes in mock terror, drawing on the one weapon he’d never have too little of.

His smartass personality.

“Woooooooooowwwwwwww.” he drawls, and Barney swallows hard in terror on his behalf because, you know, mocking a literal Titan without actual certain incoming backup is probably a good way to get your guts spread around the control deck and then shot out into space.

“Keep talkin, big guy.” Clint says, shifting slightly as Thanos starts to approach him. “Honestly, man, you can keep chattin about your stupid universe domination plans all day. God knows you blathered enough about em to me this morning. But honestly? I don’t really care what you say. At the end of the day, it’s like my brother said. You’re nuthin but a big stupid playground bully, beatin up the smaller kids and kickin em around to make yourself look big. Well, I got news for you. Playtime’s over. You brought this on yourself.”

Clint’s voice has lost its joking tone. “So. Shut up and fight. Or are ya _scared_ of what some _stupid kid_ can do?”

Thanos smiled. It was absolutely terrifying.

Clint grinned back, teeth red in the flickering light. It was also frightening. In its own way.

Barney caught a glint of light off of something hidden in Thanos’ palm.

Well. He figured he’d waited long enough. He reached out, grabbed the blaster he’d dropped when Thanos had whammied him. And plugged three shots straight into Thanos’ center of mass. Clint jumped about a foot in the air and looked downright surprised, then ecstatic.

“Barney?!”

Plasma sizzled on the Titan’s armor. Dripped down onto the floor. Ate into the metal. Thanos didn’t move. Of course. He spoke to Barney without looking around.

“I will crush your skull and feed your bloody carcass to my werebeasts, insect. Once I am done ripping this impudent little pup into pieces with my bare hands.”

“Then why doncha get started instead of just talkin about it?” Clint sneered. Thanos smiled thinly. And reached out. Clint, mad grin still plastered on his face, swung the piece of pipe hard at the would be Lord of Death.

And that’s when the rest of the assembled heroes, Guardians, and assorted Ravagers—because their captain, Yondu, had dubbed Thanos a “jackass” and thereby worthy of complete obliteration—leapt forward, weapons blazing, assorted battle cries and inventive epithets roaring forth in a overpowering wave of light and impact and thundering sound.

* * *

Long story short, Thanos was beaten.

Roundly.

Soundly.

And quite thoroughly.

His fleet was obliterated.

And pretty much everyone important made it out in one piece.

Clint, stubborn bastard that he was, had collapsed right after Thanos had gone down for the final time. Barney had been there to catch him on one side. Tasha on the other.

They’d made eye contact.

She hadn’t shived him on the spot.

This gave Barney hope that one day, in the future, they could be friends.

Maybe really far in the future.

But, if it ever happened, that would be a story all its own.


End file.
